Top 5 US Smartphones in Q1 2009

On 06/05/2009, in Apple, OEM, by Volker

After all the talk (and more talk) about Apple’s iPhone, a new report provides some new numbers reminding everyone that there are more phones on this earth than the sleek one from Cupertino. It is not about the iPhone (or not only) but about Blackberry, the iPhone, Blackberry and Blackberry. Yes, this is the first four places in the top-selling smartphones in the US in Q1/2009 according to market research specialists NPD Group (it is only the press release, so pretty lean on information).

Also: completing the top 5 is a phone with an open-source OS, namely the T-Mobile G1 (the first Android handset). I will be interesting to see if there is more to come from this last group (see my post on the state of play of open-source operating systems here).
So the top 5 are:
  1. RIM BlackBerry Curve (all 83XX models)
  2. Apple iPhone 3G (all models)
  3. RIM BlackBerry Storm
  4. RIM BlackBerry Pearl (all models, except flip)
  5. T-Mobile G1
So: even though they counted all of the 3G iPhones in, they still could not beat the Blackberry Curve. Well done, RIM!
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Smartphone Market Shares & Growth

On 12/03/2009, in Apple, OEM, by Volker

World market leader Nokia had a bruising 2008, at least in the smartphone field. According to a study, the Finns’ market share in this segment dropped by 10% to a – well – still fairly respectable 40.8% in Q4/2008 (as compared to 50.9% a for the quarter in the previous year). Painful!

The big winners were RIM (growth of 84.9% year-on-year), Apple (111.6%) and Samsung (138%) although the latter grew from a fairly low share (1.8%). HTC was up 20% but its carrier-branded handsets (T-Mobile G1, etc) were not listed under its own tab but under “others”, so there might actually have been more (probable when considering that the company’s profits rose sharply in Q4/2008 on G1 sales).
Apple, interestingly, is said to have suffered a fall of sales during Q4/2008 with growth in that quarter driven by the Blackberry Storm, T-Mobile G1 and strong Samsung sales. On the OS side, Windows Mobile made headway, mainly via the successful HTC Touch line and the Samsung Omnia.
Overall smartphone sales in Q4/2008 were 38m and 140m for the whole year. This seems to tie in roughly with the numbers I discussed earlier this month.
The changes are of interest to the content industry, too. Smartphones make for a disproportionate amount of content consumption, and smartphones also lead the way for the new app stores that are breaking through everywhere after Apple showed its competitors just how much consumers are craving content. RIM is out of the blocks, as is Android. Nokia announced its Ovi Store and runs similar programmes with N-Gage, NCD and Comes with Music already and Windows Mobile has just announced the shop it will launch itself. Remains to be seen where Palm will go with its Pre and WebOS: it only had 0.9% of the market (some faithful Treo users!) and hence lots of catching up to do. And what about the newly coined JavaFX?
Here are the charts (courtesy of Gartner via Cellular News) for 1) Q4 2008 by vendor, 2) all of 2008 by vendor, 3) Q4/2008: by operating system and 4) all of 2008 by OS:

Worldwide: Smartphone Sales to End Users by Vendor

(Thousands of Units)

Company 4Q08 Sales Market Share4Q08 (%) 4Q07 Sales Market Share4Q07 (%) 4Q07-4Q08 Growth (%)
Nokia 15,561.7 40.8% 18,703.3 50.9% -16.8%
RIM 7,442.6 19.5% 4,024.7 10.9% 84.9%
Apple 4,079.4 10.7% 1,928.3 5.2% 111.6%
HTC 1,631.7 4.3% 1,361.1 3.7% 19.9%
Samsung 1,598.2 4.2% 671.5 1.8% 138.0%
Others 7,829.7 20.5% 10,077.3 27.4% -22.3%
Total 38,143.3 100% 36,766.1 100% 3.7%


Worldwide: Smartphone Sales to End Users by Vendor, 2008

Company 2008 Sales Market Share 2008 2007 Sales Market Share 2007 Growth
2007-2008
Nokia 60,920.5 43.7% 60,465.0 49.4% 0.8%
RIM 23,149.0 16.6% 11,767.7 9.6% 96.7%
Apple 11,417.5 8.2% 3,302.6 2.7% 245.7%
HTC 5,895.4 4.2% 3,718.5 3.0% 58.5%
Sharp 5,234.2 3.8% 6,885.3 5.6% -24.0%
Others 32,671.4 23.5% 36,176.6 29.6% -9.7%
Total 139,287.9 100% 122,315.6 100% 13.9%


Worldwide: Smartphone Sales to End Users by Operating System, 4Q08

Company 4Q08 Sales Market Share 4Q08 4Q07 Sales Market Share 4Q07 Growth
4Q07-4Q08
Symbian 17,949.1 47.1% 22,902.5 62.3% -21.6%
RIM 7,442.6 19.5% 4,024.7 10.9% 84.9%
Windows Mobile 4,713.9 12.4% 4,374.4 11.9% 7.8%
Mac OS X 4,079.4 10.7% 1,928.3 5.2% 111.6%
Linux 3,194.9 8.4% 2,675.9 7.3% 19.4%
Palm OS 326.5 0.9% 449.1 1.2% -27.3%
Other OSs 436.9 1.1% 411.3 1.1% 6.2%
Total 38,143.3 100% 36,766.1 100% 3.7%

Note: The “Other OSs” category includes sales of Sharp Sidekick devices based on the Danger platform.

Worldwide: Smartphone Sales to End Users by Operating System, 2008

Company 2008 Sales Market Share 2008 2007 Sales Market Share 2007 Growth
2007-2008
Symbian 72,933.5 52.4% 77,684.0 63.5% -6.1%
RIM 23,149.0 16.6% 11,767.7 9.6% 96.7%
Windows Mobile 16,498.1 11.8% 14,698.0 12.0% 12.2%
Mac OS X 11,417.5 8.2% 3,302.6 2.7% 245.7%
Linux 11,262.9 8.1% 11,756.7 9.6% -4.2%
Palm OS 2,507.2 1.8% 1,762.7 1.4% 42.2%
Other OSs 1,519.7 1.1% 1,344.0 1.1% 13.1%
Total 139,287.9 100% 122,315.6 100% 13.9%

Note: The “Other OSs” category includes sales of Sharp Sidekick devices based on the Danger platform.

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"Recession? Where?" Asks the Smartphone…

On 03/03/2009, in OEM, by Volker

I previously looked at recession-busting sectors and products, and here’s more proof that not all is bad: two reports point out that smartphones continue to outperform the market rather significantly, recording growth figures of 25.9% year-on-year in Europe; the growth for all of 2007 vs 2008 was even more impressive: they grew by 36.1%. In the US, smartphones increased their share of the overall mobile phone market from 12% in Q4/2007 to 25% a year later. Good numbers!

Half of the (US) smartphones now come with touchscreens, with 70% “instead” (?) having a QWERTY keyboard (my best guess is that this includes phones with a slide-out keyboard, such as the T-Mobile G1 or the Sony Ericsson Xperia).

So how come? The iPhone but also other devices like Blackberries, Nokia’s higher-end phones (e.g. the N95) have powerfully demonstrated that the use of a mobile for things other than using voice and SMS (and take the occasional snap with a so-so camera) is not the end of all things. The overall feature sets of smartphones but – possibly more importantly still – the overall user experience is generally significantly better on a fairly comprehensive scale, and this – in particular in times of recession – would suggest a much higher value for money (“if I pay £50, then I get 4x in value of what I would otherwise have.”): they now all contain decent cameras, enough storage to work as a decent MP3 player (or in Apple’s case even as an iPod…), they do e-mail, connect more effortlessly to the Internet, play more fulfilling games and generally provide a much richer content experience (did I just hear “widgets”?).
For the content industry, this is good news: more powerful devices are generally easier to address and provide a better route to transport brands and production values across to the small screen. The iPhone has shown (see e.g. here and here) that users DO use their phones for all sorts of things if one makes it easy for them. Therefore, the smarter the phone, the higher the consumption. Good, good!
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Finally: a new Palm

On 09/01/2009, in OEM, by Volker

After bloody ages (and 425m Elevation dollars later) Palm came out with a bang yesterday at CES by unveiling the Pre and its new WebOS. Palm’s shareholders will be chuffed as the stock surged in the hours afterwards. Now, what is it? And does it have legs? One of the first reports (even containing a minute-by-minute live-blog of the presentation) notes that


‘its form factor is a blend of the HTC Touch and the iPhone. The software looks an awful, awful lot like that of the iPhone — multitouch, gestures and so on. Many of the apps also have a very strong likeness to the iPhone [...].”

That in itself is of course not a bad thing. And other reports confirm high hardware quality and nice UI. However… Aren’t they a bit late? And where will the content come from? Palm used to have a faithful following on his Tungsten and Treo product lines but this is a while ago now and there have been some awesome devices in the interim, some of which – most notably the iPhone and the G1 as well as RIM‘s Blackberries and the higher-end Nokia devices – have amalgamated a great device with a great UI and commercial environment into a huge following. Apple AppStore, Android Market, N-Gage and Ovi, Blackberry Application Center, etc, are all there or there about. And Palm will be up against that. The fact that it has – at least initially – tied itself to Sprint only will not be much help there.
WebOS is said to be easy to develop for. Allegedly HTML, CSS and some other stuff known from the web would be enough to develop for it. But will anyone do it unless there is a device base large enough to make it a compelling commercial case (which even seems to hit platforms like Nokia’s N-Gage; THQ has just apparently dropped its “Worms World Party” development for this).
It’s nice to see they’re back but I think that the jury is still out on the success of this.
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