iPhone’s mobile market share hits 1.5 percent
By Ronald O Carlson
As many competitors flounder and the market in general contracts 11 percent, the Cupertino, CA-based computer and widget maker is taking a bigger slice of the general handset market. Still leave it to a troll slumming for pageviews to wonder aloud why the company isn’t growing even faster.
Data from ABI Research indicates that the iPhone’s share of the general (ie not smart phone specific) mobile handset market has risen from 1.1 percent at the end of 2008 to 1.5 percent at the end of the first quarter. Kevin Burden, practice director with ABI Research notes:
As always there are winners and losers. Samsung and LG demonstrated healthy gains to take their market shares to 17.8 percent and 8.8 percent respectively. Another star performer was RIM which raised its share to 3 percent due largely to the success of its Blackberry Bold. It is a little curious that Apple’s market share is just 1.5 percent given the success of its AppStore. As popular as the iPhone 3G has been, increased competition in the touchscreen segment and a lack of product differentiation may be dampening deman.
The big losers last quarter were Nokia and Sony Ericsson.
Just squeaking by?
In its most recent quarterly results, Apple said that it had sold 3.79 million smartphones, which represents 123 percent growth year over year and, even by ABI’s reckoning, Cupertino’s sophomore handset saw its market share jump nearly 40 percent quarter over quarter.
Further, Apple has also said that it has sold about 16 million iPod touches, which adds further breadth and depth to its ultra-mobile computer installed base of which the iPhone is the bigger piece. Thereupon, various sources have said the iPhone accounts for about one-third of total smartphone sales revenue worldwide and its share of smartphone unit volume is in the neighborhood of 20 percent.
Lastly, the App Store’s share of mobile software sales is multiples of the “other than iPhone” market with nearly every competitor scrambling to mimic Apple’s overwhelming, category defining success in this area.
So, where exactly is Burden seeing evidence of ‘dampened demand’? Does this kind flame baiting sell more reports or is this just another case of troll stirring the pot, because ‘There’s no such thing as bad publicity’?
What’s your take?
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