This isn’t a threat yet to Apple, but after the markets mature and market shares are established, Apple will need to focus on retaining and expanding its market share against competitors like Samsung.
And while Nokia’s smartphone shipments have nosedived year over year for the first quarter, lagging overall sales have made Samsung the number one mobile vendor worldwide.
Nokia is officially the world’s biggest Window Phone vendor having shifted more handsets that HTC, Samsung, LG, Dell and ZTE combined.
In late 2010, the company owned 87 percent of the tablet market, according to research firm IDC.
Nokia, which had been the number one mobile phone vendor since IDC began tracking the market in 2004, has continued its slide in market share.
Nokia’s handset market share fell annually from 30.4 percent to 22.5 percent while its smartphone market share plummeted from 23.5 percent to 8.25 percent.
With overall shipments down 23.8 percent year over year, it has now dropped to number twostill holding a respectable 20.8 percent market share.
Yes, the Android is cheap and has attained a large market share very quickly, but it has very little customer loyalty and many of its current customers are switching to the iPhone.
Samsung posted a 35.4 percent year over year increase in units to take the top spot among all mobile phone vendors.
Apple, which became number three in mobile phone sales last quarter after its blowout launch of the iPhone 4S, held its spot.
Trust in Apple is important as it is beginning to penetrate markets like the iWallet and mobile commerce, which store sensitive information like credit card numbers.
The company still managed to increase shipments 88.7 percent year over year, enough to grab almost 9 percent of the mobile phone market with just its iPhone alone.
A study from January found that Android’s tablet share tripled to 39 percent in the fourth quarter, when Amazon and Barnes & Noble launched their tablets.
However, LG’s shipments slid significantly, dropping down to fifth place with just 3.4 percent.
A wide variety of manufacturers battle for the remaining 39 percent of the mobile market.
Samsung And Google?) Apple currently maintains a strong competitive edge in the mobile market, with its market size increasing tremendously.
Recent reports now verify that Samsung is the #1 manufacturer of high end smartphones, but that is not currently a threat for Apple since its competing with Samsung in new and untouched markets, like in China.
Source: IDC”The halcyon days of rapid growth in the smartphone market have been good to Samsung,” Kevin Restivo, senior research analyst with IDC, said in a statement.
The results leave Apple and Samsung together controlling more than half the smartphone market.
The company had an outstanding 267 percent growth in unit shipments year over year, according to IDC’s reckoning, making it the top smartphone vendor for the quarter with 29.1 percent market share.
Motorola’s Xoom — the first Android tablet on the market — has only a 7 percent share.
Though Samsung no longer reports smartphone or tablet sales numbers publicly for “competitive reasons,” IDC’s estimates jibe with estimates from Juniper Research (which also ranked Samsung on top for the first quarter).
After all, a March 2012 IDC study showed that Apple shipped 15.4 million iPads in the fourth quarter of 2011; Amazon’s Kindle Fire debuted with 4.7 million units shipped with 16.8 percent of the market; Samsung had 5.5 percent; and Barnes & Noble dropped to 3.5 percent from 4.5 percent in the third quarter of 2011.
Overall, the handset market grew by a modest 3 percent while the smartphone market grew by a more substantial 41 percent compared with the first quarter of 2011.
Apple’s shipments were up significantly for the quarter, as we noted previously, enough to gain several points of share to nearly 25 percent, according to IDC data.
Moreover, on news of that announcement, Apple stock which had been trading at about $19.75 a share, popped about 40 percent.
Apple benefited from a major launch of the iPhone 4S in China, as well as sustained demand globally.
And its gross margins continue to earn it more revenue than Samsung, despite the differences in unit shipments.
“Apple’s revenues from [iOS sales] continue to remain significantly higher than Samsung’s, even when you take into account the latter’s feature phones,” Juniper Research analyst Daniel Ashdown said in an e mailed statement.
Apple’s iPhone revenue alone was $22.7 billion for the quarter, while Samsungs entire mobile division booked about $17.0 billion.
Currently, Apple and Samsung are competing in capturing the largest possible market share in China because of its nearly untapped market.
He added: ‘the risk to Microsoft is that other handset makers may choose not to compete with Nokia and may turn their backs on Windows Phone.
Its smartphone shipments were down over 50 percent year over year, enough to drop from 23.8 percent share last year to just 8.2 percent.
RIM is still struggling to ship its next generation BB10 operating system, which it showed off publicly for the first time on Tuesday.
It holds on to fourth place, with share dropping seven points to 6.7 percent.
HTC lost half its market share as well, holding fifth place at 4.8 percent, though it seems to be banking on its recent One X and One S models to turn its tides.
Expect Barnes & Noble shares to pop on this news they were up 91 percent in pre market trading Monday.
“With other companies in the midst of major strategic transitions, the contest between Apple and Samsung will bear close observation as hotly anticipated new models are launched,” senior IDC analyst Ramon Llamas said.
Anna Street is a business journalist based in London, UK. Anna has a passion for financial markets and breaking news stories and loves writing about business news, stock market, and economic opinions that matters most to its audience. Anna spends a lot of time discovering and researching latest financial markets and industry news stories in order to make sure the latest and greatest stories are brought to you first on BigBoardNews.com.
