Smartphone Sales: Apple Squeezed, Blackberry Squashed, Android 81.3% 390
mrspoonsi writes "Engadget reports: Smartphone market share for the third quarter...as you'd imagine, the world is still Android's oyster. Strategy Analytics estimates that the OS has crossed the symbolic 80 percent mark, reaching 81.3 percent of smartphone shipments by the end of September. Not that Google was the only company doing well — Nokia's strong US sales helped Windows Phone grow to 4.1 percent of the market, or nearly double what it had a year ago."
Re:Apple made the same mistake (Score:3, Insightful)
If you are talking GUIs then you are talking about Macintosh same main processor as Amiga but two fewer custom processors... guess who was cheaper. Atari had a graphical GUI too hardware cheaper... apples always been able to get a gullible subset of computer users to buy there over inflated hardware/software. Now with the marketing wizard dead, it feels like the 90s all over again.
Re:Apple made the same mistake (Score:5, Insightful)
....
While their phone is inferior, it is "good enough" for all they need to do
....
but mostly because they see that their cheap phone can do EVERYTHING my iPhone can do at a quarter of the price.
So with that last sentence you're saying it's superior to your iPhone....
Re:Apple made the same mistake (Score:3, Insightful)
Apple is actually selling more iPhones than ever, even if their market share is falling.
Just like BlackBerry was not very long ago...
Re:Apple made the same mistake (Score:5, Insightful)
You're conflating marketshare and sales volume. If your sales volume goes down, so does your marketshare* but the inverse is not true. Your sales volume can be increasing - and with it your profits - while your marketshare declines, simply because other companies are now selling products in your sphere. As long as volume is good and your margins are good, you keep making money.
This is why Apple continued to be profitable in the days when all it was selling was iMacs and Powerbooks to a tiny portion of the market: they made money on every unit sold and the number of units they sold was enough for them to operate. This is why Apple's balance sheet was at its healthiest in the period when its smartphone marketshare was declining most rapidly: there was a boom on, and their volumes were increasing spectacularly even as their share shrank.
I'd be more concerned about all the phone companies who are making losses every quarter on their devices, despite growing market share. If you're selling 10% of the world's smartphones and you're losing $100 per device sold you need to turn that around or you are up the creek.
*Unless the whole market is shrinking, but that wasn't the case for Nokia or Blackberry
Re:Niche market (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Niche market (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Apple made the same mistake (Score:4, Insightful)
The early '90s, when Amiga and Atari went out of business? I bet Apple regrets not copying their business models. I loved my Amiga but Commodore were utterly delusional if they thought they were competitive at that time.
Re:Apple made the same mistake (Score:5, Insightful)
Same thing happened with computers, Apple only really competed at the higher end with SCSI drives and color screens, while crude ibm-compatible clones could be had for a fraction of the price. People are quite ok with inferior so long as its cheaper and "good enough", especially during tougher economic times. And once you've bought into one system, the cost of escaping it for another incompatible system is high because you'd need to reacquire all your applications.
Re:Apple made the same mistake (Score:5, Insightful)
These days it's the opposite. The Nexus 5 beats the iPhone 5S in pretty much every area. Better screen, NFC, wireless charging, full 1080p video output, better camera, and arguably better software. Yet it costs half the price.
At one point you could reasonably argue that it was worth paying extra for an iPhone, but these days unless you are already locked in I think it's going to be hard to justify paying double for an inferior or at best equal product.
Re:Niche market (Score:5, Insightful)
Yeah, from my perspective I can't help but to notice the huge boner most people on internet have towards market share and mainstream market acceptance, regardless if it's for smartphones, computers, game consoles and accessories or services. People just seem to forget that business are about making money. Having a huge share may have some help with it, but that is not always true.
Depends on whether you are thinking as an investor or consumer I guess. I find it puzzling when consumers have a huge boner for the extreme profit margin a manufacturer is extracting from them ;)
Re:2.3 million Android phones per day (Score:4, Insightful)
Actually I'm more surprised wiht Nokia taking 4.1% of the market.
While a small market share, 4.1% of a big market still means lots of phones. And for a single manufacturer to have >4% market share is pretty impressive, considering how they messed up their existing position.
Re:Apple made the same mistake (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Apple made the same mistake (Score:5, Insightful)
If these companies could put their greed aside, we'd already be running apps from one OS on another OS, and the interoperability would be seemless.
The technology is there.
Everything would be simpler.
And less development effort would go to waste.
Capitalism is just working against us here.
Re:Apple made the same mistake (Score:4, Insightful)
Here's the true problem:
Apple put all their effort in building "the perfect" user interface.
However, people are getting more educated and tech-savvy in general.
They don't need Apple to hold their hand anymore.
There's this saying:
Build a system that even a fool can use, and only a fool will want to use it.
(George Bernard Shaw)
Now, older people may still depend on easy one-button interfaces. However, this group of people clashes with the "image" that Apple tries to associate itself with.
The youth understands this and is not falling for their marketing tactics anymore.
There's another saying:
Once your parents use a particular technology, it has lost its coolness.