[PCWorld]

Post your comments for Who's the King of Smartphone Sales? here

[honkj]

why in the world don't you just look at profits from the two companies, that tells you a whole lot, there are dozens and dozens of samsung androids you can get for free or close to it... (and if it isn't for free, just wait a month or so) calling them sales, is akin to calling a ticket on the titanic a good investment. let alone king of anything....

my mother can give things away much faster than Samsung... so does that make her queen?

[WilliamKull]

WHO CARES!!!

[KyleCutler]

honkj, on 29 April 2012 - 09:54 AM, said:

why in the world don't you just look at profits from the two companies, that tells you a whole lot, there are dozens and dozens of samsung androids you can get for free or close to it... (and if it isn't for free, just wait a month or so) calling them sales, is akin to calling a ticket on the titanic a good investment. let alone king of anything....

my mother can give things away much faster than Samsung... so does that make her queen?

Free?

I'm sorry, but you do not get phones for free. If you sign a contract for £30 per month for 18 months, that money doesn't just pay for your Calls, texts and Data. That money also pays for your handset.

Free phones, what next? Free Calls and texts? (The Monthly fee is there for a reason..)

[Joshi43]

Since Samsung is unwilling to release clear numbers for their smart phone sales, they are obviously not proud of releasing such info. Many of their phone sales are for basic phones and many of their smart phones are given away- $0 downpayment.

[AdamGreen]

WilliamKull, on 29 April 2012 - 10:08 AM, said:

WHO CARES!!!

Apparently you care enough to register at this site and post in all caps with three exclamation points.

Anyway, the mobile technology industry is arguably the biggest market on the planet, poised to create the "post PC" era that Apple and perhaps Google etc. want consumers to include in their monthly credit card burden.

If you look at a non-technical, retail consumer, or on the Web, they agonize over spending $500-$1000 on a PC that will stay in their household for two to five years. There's a lot more profit in a consumer buying a smart phone for $100 to $500 dollars, a $1200/year renewing contract for at least two years, all pumped through their "play now, pay later" lifestyle. The first thing they do is spend $10 to $20 on a handful of apps like Angry Birds and then everything they do on the phone is a potential app purchase. This is the "subscriber" model that the software industry only dreams of creating in the PC.

So "selling" a smart phone for "free" is profitable -- more so than selling a $1000 PC. Rather like browsers are "free" ... there's nothing free about them ... the browser is the customer "channeling device" that leads the consumer to all kinds of purchases, affiliations, prejudices (and with prejudice comes a receptivity to suggestion that satisfies the prejudice ... just like a politic "democracy" system relies upon dividing the herd into red and blue corrals ... once you self-identify as "red" or "blue" you become biased, affiliated, prejudiced and so, susceptible to persuasion ... at this point, you're a sucker or what's commonly known as a consumer. There's profit to be had when people will work hours of their day just to have a consumer appliance that really costs them hundreds of thousands of dollars over the course of their life, they pay more into their cell phone bill than their monthly savings (most US consumers have zero net worth and an unmanageable debt burden built up through consumer discretionary purchases.)

So that's who cares. : )

Apple may or may not have run its full course (in the consumer electronics market control and the stock market with AAPL ranging around $600) but one thing we know for certain -- the tech industry does not allow one company to dominate today the way that Microsoft or IBM before it could dominate. As soon as Apple has the smart phone game sewn up, Google finally gets it right with the Galaxy Nexus. Nokia is dead or dying, so is the Blackberry, so is Motorola and even the recent winner HTC has faltered while Samsung is ahead in smart phones and flat screen TVs and computer monitors and everything in-between. So I think it's "inevitable" that Apple will cede its leadership to Google because a proprietary, monolithic hardware-bound-to-software technology never holds up against a multi-vendor environment indefinitely. Apple is turning to global expansion as it loses its dominance and now talks about how Google isn't ahead. And once Google takes over the smart phone market, who's next? Facebook or some company we've never even heard of that has a killer product/service that pulls the rug out from under FaceBook before FB even rebounds off its IPO hype. It's a changing world, not the bubble of the 90's, just an expanding universal market where no one company can win. It's like a gold rush -- you make a fortune in a gold rush not by discovering the seam of gold, but by selling shovels. Google today is selling shovels. Each of the other companies that's positioned to compete in the shovel market has faltered, perhaps with the exception of Microsoft because their business model is to perpetually over-promise and invariably under-deliver, but just keep throwing their weight behind their products and services, binding everything back to Windows and the PC, squeezing markets until competitors die of starvation, then expanding out once the consumer has lost their choices. That model doesn't work against Google and hasn't worked against Apple -- or at least Apple has relied upon a sentimental consumer until today, but the lacklustre advent of the iPad 3 aka "The New iPad" and the prospect of smart phone buyers already being in $100/month two-year contracts could well mean the iPhone 5 simply doesn't have the reception it is expected to find. If anything, I think smart phone users, at least technically savvy users, will move to wifi instead of cellular carriers for voice (though cellular data is surely booming) and so, if I'm any example, smart phone users are moving to cheaper (better audio quality, too!) voice over Internet. I use a Galaxy Nexus over a Verizon MiFi and it's cheaper, clearer and more versatile than the iPhone (which I also have until the AT&T contract expires.)

I see Apple and Microsoft at a party where nobody else is going to show up. Just down the street, conversations will be over the Internet, not over prehistoric, over-priced cellular voice networks.

[markverheul]

Joshi43, on 29 April 2012 - 10:21 AM, said:

Since Samsung is unwilling to release clear numbers for their smart phone sales, they are obviously not proud of releasing such info. Many of their phone sales are for basic phones and many of their smart phones are given away- $0 downpayment.

*cough*isheep*cough* Corporations don't make decisions based on 'pride' - if Samsung is unwilling to release the numbers they sure have a damn good reason to do so. Do you realize that the Asian markets (which happen to be their biggest) have distributers on every street corner and it becomes extremely diffucult to tally up sales in such cases? I would assume that the total number of shipments is more or less an accurate representation of the sales, especially in smartphones because the demand in Q4 and Q1 is expected to be higher than the supply.
Looking at the profits definitely means Apple has been successful in maintaining a good profit margin on their sales. It has worked for them since their customer base in the US has been more than willing to drain their wallets on the iphone brand. Samsung on the other hand have a much tighter control over their production process (design, fabrication, assembly and testing) and make a much bigger profit on their flagship products. At the same time, the dumbphones and cheaper smart phones dilute the margins. This probably is one of Apple's last dream quarters, and many analysts are predicting a steady decline in the absense of Jobs.

[Mattvm8v]

All I wanna see is units SOLD by company and money made from units SOLD.

Who cares how many units are shipped? You can ship billions of units of anything but it doesn't mean you sold a billion units.

[GregBrummitt]

markverheul, on 29 April 2012 - 12:31 PM, said:

*cough*isheep*cough* Corporations don't make decisions based on 'pride' - if Samsung is unwilling to release the numbers they sure have a damn good reason to do so. Do you realize that the Asian markets (which happen to be their biggest) have distributers on every street corner and it becomes extremely diffucult to tally up sales in such cases? I would assume that the total number of shipments is more or less an accurate representation of the sales, especially in smartphones because the demand in Q4 and Q1 is expected to be higher than the supply.
Looking at the profits definitely means Apple has been successful in maintaining a good profit margin on their sales. It has worked for them since their customer base in the US has been more than willing to drain their wallets on the iphone brand. Samsung on the other hand have a much tighter control over their production process (design, fabrication, assembly and testing) and make a much bigger profit on their flagship products. At the same time, the dumbphones and cheaper smart phones dilute the margins. This probably is one of Apple's last dream quarters, and many analysts are predicting a steady decline in the absense of Jobs.

Sure Mark, so the millions of shipped first gen Galaxy Tabs really probably were sold because it's hard to count sales, so we'll just assume, even though no one ever saw the device in the wild.

Maybe you missed Apple's earnings call last week. Of the 35 million iPhones that they sold a mere 9 million of them went to draining the wallets of their US customer base. The other 26 million were to the rest of the world. It was the assumption that the US is really the main iPhone market coupled with the lower than expected AT&T and Verizon sales that caused the stock to lose 13% leading up to the earnings call. The 9.5% stock bounce the day following the earnings call was because people realized "Oh, the whole world really likes the iPhone better than anything else on the market by far." I live in Prague, Czech Republic and I see more and more iPhone 4/4s in people's hands every day (in a country with far less disposable income than in the USA). I want to buy a used 3gs or 4 but all the 2nd hand stores and Craigslist type webpages are only selling Nokia, HTC and Samsung smartphones that people gave up on to get their iPhones.

Are you going to post apologies to everyone here when Apple has dream quarters in 2014 and beyond?

[dreamerof]

markverheul, on 29 April 2012 - 12:31 PM, said:

...This probably is one of Apple's last dream quarters, and many analysts are predicting a steady decline in the absense of Jobs.

I don't know what you are reading but most of what I am seeing is analysts mostly raising there Apple earnings and stock projections. Apple may very well drop the ball but it won't be in 2012 or 2013.

[markverheul]

GregBrummitt, on 29 April 2012 - 02:00 PM, said:

Maybe you missed Apple's earnings call last week. Of the 35 million iPhones that they sold a mere 9 million of them went to draining the wallets of their US customer base. The other 26 million were to the rest of the world. It was the assumption that the US is really the main iPhone market coupled with the lower than expected AT&T and Verizon sales that caused the stock to lose 13% leading up to the earnings call. The 9.5% stock bounce the day following the earnings call was because people realized "Oh, the whole world really likes the iPhone better than anything else on the market by far." I live in Prague, Czech Republic and I see more and more iPhone 4/4s in people's hands every day (in a country with far less disposable income than in the USA). I want to buy a used 3gs or 4 but all the 2nd hand stores and Craigslist type webpages are only selling Nokia, HTC and Samsung smartphones that people gave up on to get their iPhones.

Are you going to post apologies to everyone here when Apple has dream quarters in 2014 and beyond?

Well I must agree with you there (who can dispute facts and figures?). It can also be interpreted as the novelty of the iphone wearing off, at least in the US. If the iphone 5 fails to come up with compelling features, it surely won't be part of many customers' update cycle. And why would smartphone customers buy a 3gs/4 at this point? I've had one and I can say it feels ridiculously outdated compared to the current HTC/samsung superphones and even their cheaper counterparts. If it is due to lack of penetration of the european markets by the android makers, then its certainly their fault. The same applies to buyers of the iLaptops - just a few minutes worth of research into the alternatives usually convinces them to stay away from the macs.

[Nuke61]

markverheul, on 29 April 2012 - 03:16 PM, said:

Well I must agree with you there (who can dispute facts and figures?). It can also be interpreted as the novelty of the iphone wearing off, at least in the US.

The novelty wearing off? Maybe you're not aware of it, but iPhone sales are still going up:
http://upload.wikime...d91bfe27dcc.png

Quote

If the iphone 5 fails to come up with compelling features, it surely won't be part of many customers' update cycle. And why would smartphone customers buy a 3gs/4 at this point?

Compelling features? All it needs is 4G, maybe a slightly larger screen and a better camera - all Motorola did was add a larger battery and shazam... they go from offering the Droid Razor to offering the Droid Razor Maxx. A whole "new" phone and all they did was add a bigger battery.

[Vulpinemac]

markverheul, on 29 April 2012 - 12:31 PM, said:

Joshi43, on 29 April 2012 - 10:21 AM, said:

Since Samsung is unwilling to release clear numbers for their smart phone sales, they are obviously not proud of releasing such info. Many of their phone sales are for basic phones and many of their smart phones are given away- $0 downpayment.

*cough*isheep*cough* Corporations don't make decisions based on 'pride' - if Samsung is unwilling to release the numbers they sure have a damn good reason to do so. Do you realize that the Asian markets (which happen to be their biggest) have distributers on every street corner and it becomes extremely diffucult to tally up sales in such cases? I would assume that the total number of shipments is more or less an accurate representation of the sales, especially in smartphones because the demand in Q4 and Q1 is expected to be higher than the supply.
Looking at the profits definitely means Apple has been successful in maintaining a good profit margin on their sales. It has worked for them since their customer base in the US has been more than willing to drain their wallets on the iphone brand. Samsung on the other hand have a much tighter control over their production process (design, fabrication, assembly and testing) and make a much bigger profit on their flagship products. At the same time, the dumbphones and cheaper smart phones dilute the margins. This probably is one of Apple's last dream quarters, and many analysts are predicting a steady decline in the absense of Jobs.

Ummmm... huh?

First off, I'm not going to even hide the word "sheep" since you so clearly are following the Judas goat. It seems you have absolutely no concept of Apple's market; not in the US, not in Asia, not anywhere. It is also obvious that you have no understanding of Apple's engineering and design philosophies; you have no idea who designs what at Apple or for Apple. Samsung has tight control? Good lord, man, Samsung can hardly maintain control of a single platform, much less all the other things they put out. Their best customer is Apple itself--for chips, displays and other components--but they don't design any of the platforms themselves. Apple is essentially right on one point: Samsung is easily able to copy Apple's designs simply because Apple buys all those parts from Samsung. This is also why Apple is looking to spread out its sourcing so that no one company sells them enough part types to fully analyze and project what the end product would be. Samsung is doing so well simply because they CAN copy Apple so slavishly.

So far we haven't seen anything that hasn't happened before. Every time Apple appears to slip, they present something that moves the bar again far ahead of the competition. The difference is that Apple is slowly, but steadily, shifting its production methods to make themselves less dependent on a single supplier. Apple is notorious for keeping a tight lid on projects until they are near completion. We already know Apple has huge campuses around the world and multiple campuses even here in the States. Not all of them are data farms. We know Apple engineers its own chips. We know Apple engineers its own motherboards. We know Apple engineers each and every one of its products in house. All of that is a given if you paid any attention at all to history. Tim Cook got Apple into the shape it is today more than Steve Jobs did. Jobs conceived the products; Jobs marketed the products, but Cook is the one who really made them happen. Cook has also learned his mistake. He's the one that made Apple so dependent on Samsung. He's also the one now working to break that dependency.

Meanwhile, Apple's iPhone is still the top-selling single brand in smart phones in the world by almost every verifiable analysis. As this article clearly points out, we simply cannot verify Samsung's smartphone numbers.

[Vulpinemac]

markverheul, on 29 April 2012 - 03:16 PM, said:

GregBrummitt, on 29 April 2012 - 02:00 PM, said:

Maybe you missed Apple's earnings call last week. Of the 35 million iPhones that they sold a mere 9 million of them went to draining the wallets of their US customer base. The other 26 million were to the rest of the world. It was the assumption that the US is really the main iPhone market coupled with the lower than expected AT&T and Verizon sales that caused the stock to lose 13% leading up to the earnings call. The 9.5% stock bounce the day following the earnings call was because people realized "Oh, the whole world really likes the iPhone better than anything else on the market by far." I live in Prague, Czech Republic and I see more and more iPhone 4/4s in people's hands every day (in a country with far less disposable income than in the USA). I want to buy a used 3gs or 4 but all the 2nd hand stores and Craigslist type webpages are only selling Nokia, HTC and Samsung smartphones that people gave up on to get their iPhones.

Are you going to post apologies to everyone here when Apple has dream quarters in 2014 and beyond?

Well I must agree with you there (who can dispute facts and figures?). It can also be interpreted as the novelty of the iphone wearing off, at least in the US. If the iphone 5 fails to come up with compelling features, it surely won't be part of many customers' update cycle. And why would smartphone customers buy a 3gs/4 at this point? I've had one and I can say it feels ridiculously outdated compared to the current HTC/samsung superphones and even their cheaper counterparts. If it is due to lack of penetration of the european markets by the android makers, then its certainly their fault. The same applies to buyers of the iLaptops - just a few minutes worth of research into the alternatives usually convinces them to stay away from the macs.

And all that does is prove you don't like Apple products. Well, lots of people don't like Apple products--but lots more do.

[markverheul]

Vulpinemac, on 29 April 2012 - 05:47 PM, said:

Apple is essentially right on one point: Samsung is easily able to copy Apple's designs simply because Apple buys all those parts from Samsung. This is also why Apple is looking to spread out its sourcing so that no one company sells them enough part types to fully analyze and project what the end product would be. Samsung is doing so well simply because they CAN copy Apple so slavishly.

Thats laughable! It either shows a complete lack of knowledge of patent laws, or we've just resolved the apple-samsung patent dispute in one sentence.

Quote

you have no idea who designs what at Apple or for Apple. Samsung has tight control? Good lord, man, Samsung can hardly maintain control of a single platform, much less all the other things they put out. Their best customer is Apple itself--for chips, displays and other components--but they don't design any of the platforms themselves.

Well, you're wrong there. Apple in almost all cases lays out the specifications for their product, like 'a screen which uses technology x and provides a resolution y' or 'chip with frequency f and power budget P'. The design effort and fabrication is upto companies like intel, AMD and samsung - they remain a supplier as long as they meet the specs. You don't need to glorify apple as the owner of the world's chip design expertise - better leave it to the experts. Also, note how quickly samsung get their products from concept to completion. This is the direct result of the tight integration of all their processes. Imagine the mess apple would be in if they decide to custom design all their products to fit customer needs.

[kronoscornelius]

Samsung make the parts that go into the iPhone plus they have the top selling smartphones. The answer should be obvious.

About why I care. Well Pep Guardiola just quit as Barcelona's coach so that means Apple vs Samsung may be my top contact sport for a while.

Investors probably read these things I guess to gain perspective ( or loose it )

And developers may be interested in who is winning the market share to decide which platform to cover first (specially if resources are tight )

[wyw201]

Apple's largest consumer base is actually in Asia, mainly China, not the US

[karthiq]

@people, Apple or samsung wont share their profits with you or me. So dont take the results personally and attack each other. If you find it interesting to read it, do it and get back to your lives.

[MelCizadek]

The King of Smartphones is very obviously Apple.  

Unit sales marketshare is a very poor indicator of royalty - it is profitshare, usage share, platform and ecosystem that crowns the King by all the metrics that matter.  The fact that Apple probably also beat Samsung in unit sales vs shipping as well is just icing on the cake.

- 80% of mobile devices activated by businesses last quarter were iOS devices according to Good Technologies.
- 90% of mobile purchases were made on iPads according to Rich Relevance
- 69% of mobile web browsing occurs on iOS devices versus only 27% on Android devices according to Chitika
- 89% of the mobile web browsing on my university’s websites are from iOS devices and only 10% from Android
- iOS developer income share is 6x greater than Android
- Apple has captured a 75% share of the profits of the entire cellphone industry with Samsung being relegated to a measly 20%
- iOS has a vastly larger ecosystem of third party hardware peripherals, accessories, cases, docks, car integration, app numbers, app downloads and sheer developer numbers than Android or Samsung.

[Vulpinemac]

Nice of you to so blatantly misunderstand my arguments.

markverheul, on 29 April 2012 - 07:37 PM, said:

Vulpinemac, on 29 April 2012 - 05:47 PM, said:

Apple is essentially right on one point: Samsung is easily able to copy Apple's designs simply because Apple buys all those parts from Samsung. This is also why Apple is looking to spread out its sourcing so that no one company sells them enough part types to fully analyze and project what the end product would be. Samsung is doing so well simply because they CAN copy Apple so slavishly.

Thats laughable! It either shows a complete lack of knowledge of patent laws, or we've just resolved the apple-samsung patent dispute in one sentence.

Quote

you have no idea who designs what at Apple or for Apple. Samsung has tight control? Good lord, man, Samsung can hardly maintain control of a single platform, much less all the other things they put out. Their best customer is Apple itself--for chips, displays and other components--but they don't design any of the platforms themselves.

Well, you're wrong there. Apple in almost all cases lays out the specifications for their product, like 'a screen which uses technology x and provides a resolution y' or 'chip with frequency f and power budget P'. The design effort and fabrication is upto companies like intel, AMD and samsung - they remain a supplier as long as they meet the specs. You don't need to glorify apple as the owner of the world's chip design expertise - better leave it to the experts. Also, note how quickly samsung get their products from concept to completion. This is the direct result of the tight integration of all their processes. Imagine the mess apple would be in if they decide to custom design all their products to fit customer needs.

Please try to explain to me how the manufacturer of a chip, using a design from an engineering source, owns the patents on said chip? True, Apple does lay out the specs for things like displays, but Apple does have its own chip design sector (if you'll remember, they purchased a chip design company several years ago) and contracts Samsung (and others) to build those chips. Everything that Apple outright purchases from stocks still have to meet Apple's minimum quality standards (defect rate of 2% per shipment, for instance) and I have personal experience with Apple returning an entire shipment if the defect rate exceeds that spec by even 1/10 of one point.

In other words, your "... 'chip with frequency f and power budget P'..." is only half right only if it's an off-the-shelf part and not one Apple has designed and paid for them to manufacture.

As for the patents on the overall device (phone, pad, whatever), it seems strange that Samsung would claim patents on processes it never used prior to Apple releasing the first iPhones. Apple's claims about Samsung's phones and pads looking so much like Apple's own products where acknowledged and supported in German court (and elsewhere). Samsung's claims about functional features in those products? Well, we're still waiting to hear, but so far the issue is more a waste of money than anything else for both sides. Apple could, if they really tried, probably screw Samsung from one end to the other by simply buying majority share in stock--a hostile takeover--but Apple doesn't, as yet, want to take it to that level because then it starts running into other legal issues that have nothing to do with Samsung itself. Apple has to allow competitors to its products; Apple does not have to let that competitor clone its products.