Samsung is breaking records with smart phone sales. The number of Samsung smart phones shipped has nearly tripled since last year, with the Samsung Galaxy S2 and its buddies even eclipsing Apple's boffo business.
New figures from industry-watchers IDC suggest Samsung has shipped an industry record of 42 million smart phones this year alone, a whopping rise of 267 per cent on last year. By those numbers, Samsung owns 29 per cent of the smart phone industry, just above Apple's 35 million iPhones, making up a quarter of the market.
The market for smart phones has exploded in the last year, as the popularity of
feature phones declines. Overall 145 million smart phones have shipped since the new
year. And Samsung is probably about to add significantly to those numbers, with the Galaxy S3 -- the hotly-anticipated S2 sequel -- launching this week.
Those figures relate to shipments rather than sales, we should point out -- that's the number of phones sent to shops, rather than the number of phones actually bought by punters. Unlike Apple, Samsung doesn't report exact numbers, but you get the general idea: Samsung is the big dog right now.
It was revealed this week that if you count old-fashioned feature phones, as well as smart phones, then Samsung is the clear winner in the total number of phones produced, knocking Nokia off the top spot for the first time in 14 years.
Nokia knocked off
With such big growth from the market leaders, someone has to lose out, and unsurprisingly it's Nokia. Shipments from Finland more than halved to 11.9 million -- the Nokia Lumia 800 coming too late to prevent the slide. BlackBerry and HTC phones also suffered, although HTC has the One X and its ilk set to sell like hot cakes and potentially reverse the company's fortunes.
Press play on our video to learn more about the fascinating world of Samsung:
Is Samsung a worthy king of the phone world? Will the S3 smash all competition? Will Windows Phone save Nokia? Tell me your thoughts in the comments section or on our Facebook page.
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Comments 21
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anonymous 1 May, 2012 15:46
Yes shipped is better than sold, lol
Melial 1 May, 2012 16:50
In contrast iSuppli reckons Samsung oly shipped 32 million making Apple's iPhone number one in unit shipments yet again this quarter.
However, this is all moot as unit sales share isn't the important metric. It is ecosystem health, app platform share, usage share, developer income, third party peripheral marketshare, manufacturer profitshare, web browser share, business market share etc which are far more revealing as to who is beating who in the mobile market:
- 80% of mobile devices activated by businesses last quarter were iOS devices according to Good Technologies.
- 73.9% of business smartphones in use were iPhones and 26.1% were Android.
- The iPad accounted for 97.3 % of business tablet activations for the quarter, compared with 2.7% for Android.
- 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 a typical Australian 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.
Although lots of people buy Android phones, so many are obviously such cut-price hardware that they must only be used as dumbphones as users certainly aren't browsing the web on them, using them for work, purchasing content or engaging in web commerce.
These are the figures that matter to developers, advertisers, content producers, shareholders, business people and ultimately consumers and Apple is head and shoulders above all competition in these terms.
anonymous 1 May, 2012 17:41
Did Luke Westaway change his name to Melial?
anonymous 1 May, 2012 18:04
Last check at my local LaSource (RadioShack in Canada), the salesman and I counted at least 5 Samsung Galaxy's raging from the iPhone competition (SII) down to ugly little machines that are dirt cheap but barely smartphones... all counting as Galaxy sales. Sad when you can't compare oranges to oranges and sold to sold vs sold to shipped.
anonymous 1 May, 2012 18:41
Melial, Samsung don't just ship the phones to the shops for free. 7 million phones were still sold and made Samsung money, wether people use them or not meas * all to Samsung. They dont get a penny everytime you touch it you know. Yes, the app ecosystem is important but Androids is rapidly growing and with the overhaul in ICS, the quality will increase dramatically. As for the profits, thats because Apple make them for pittence by driving there workers to mass suicide and sell them for the kind of money that a student could live off for a few months.
Melial 1 May, 2012 23:54
Anonymous, if so many Galaxy's have sold can you please explain the stats that I just presented?
Are the owners of these phones using them or not? Why is web browsing share so incredibly low? And no, your average Joe does not go and change browser user agents.
Why are businesses not activating more Android smartphones and tablets on their systems?
ICS means nothing if hardly any phones or tablets use it. It's been 6 months and still it is only on 3% of devices and the $79 Android smartphone I bought a month ago still shipped with Froyo a fully 2 year old OS.
Sales of these cheap and nasty phones Android phones means very little if Samsung isn't making money on them and Apple's enormous industry profitshare shows that they aren't. Just ask Nokia who had the largest unit share of smartphone sales by an enormous margin for years and it made no diffence to them.
Nokia's example demonstrates if the app platform and ecosystem isn't working and driving competitive levels of income into the hands of developers, content producers, third party manufacturers, and the phone manufacturer etc, then sheer unit sales means absolutely squat.
Melial 2 May, 2012 00:00
Mass suicides? Oh you mean the 200 workers at Foxconn's Wuhan plant that for a second time in 6 months threatened to jump off the roof over pay conditions
Do you really not realize that plant makes xboxes for Microsoft and jhas nothing to do with Apple?
Do you also not understand that if Foxconn had the same suicide rate as the rest of China, we would see 242 suicides a year there and not the 17 suicides that have been documented over 5 years?
I'm sorry to say but you've obviously been hood-winked by the Mike Daisey inspired witch hunt against Apple, not by actual reality.
anonymous 2 May, 2012 10:00
Melial - BRAIN WASHED iSheep - wind your neck in!
Did you know 70% of facts are also made up!!!......
anonymous 2 May, 2012 10:38
Perhaps it points out the iOS users have nothing better to do?
Melial 2 May, 2012 12:04
@anonymous, so do you actually have any evidence to refute the facts I have presented or are you just going to rely on insults?
anonymous 2 May, 2012 12:52
This only means Samsung are gaining, because those figures are very sugar-coated.
That said, Apple ought to be in fear; Samsung are the first competitor that has successfully emulated their own marketing tactics, with the inclusion of their own, and it's paying off in huge dividends.
anonymous 2 May, 2012 13:36
@Melial do you have any sources to back up your facts? And a link to the website which posted the fact is not a source!
Melial 2 May, 2012 14:30
Anonymous, ever hear of Google? I've given you the sources for each statistic. It's not exactly rocket science to search for those reports. I'll try posting some urls below to help you out assuming Crave allows that.
Melial 2 May, 2012 14:43
He's a few links to get you started:
- 80% of mobile devices activated by businesses last quarter were iOS devices according to Good Technologies.
- 73.9% of business smartphones in use were iPhones and 26.1% were Android.
- The iPad accounted for 97.3 % of business tablet activations for the quarter, compared with 2.7% for Android.
http://news.techworld.com/mobile-wireless/3354356/apple-winning-over-android-in-enterprise-adoption/
- 90% of mobile purchases were made on iPads according to Rich Relevance
http://gigaom.com/apple/study-apples-iphone-ipad-account-for-90-percent-of-mobile-purchases/
- 69% of mobile web browsing occurs on iOS devices versus only 27% on Android devices according to Chitika
http://www.redmondpie.com/ios-users-surf-the-internet-more-on-their-devices-as-compared-to-android-users-study-reveals/
Melial 2 May, 2012 16:38
And one more:
NetMarketShare April 2012 Mobile Web marketshare:
iOS = 63.19%
Android = 19.27%
http://www.netmarketshare.com/operating-system-market-share.aspx?qprid=9&qpcustomb=1
What are all these Android device owners doing?
The only serious explanation is that the majority are cheap and nasty Android phones that users are just treating as dumbphones. Android unit sales Marketshare is meaningless.
anonymous 3 May, 2012 03:37
Get a life, loser.
Melial 3 May, 2012 05:26
@anonmous
Umm, thank you for your well thought out, comprehensive and reasoned critique of the facts I have presented...or not...
*sigh*
Rich Trenholm 3 May, 2012 11:29
Be nice please, folks.
Thanks for the interesting numbers, Melial
anonymous 3 May, 2012 12:59
@Melial "73.9% of business smartphones in use were Iphones and 26.1% were Android." so no business uses Blackberrys...wierd where I work we do. As I said a web link prooves nothing. Look at the rubbish Cnet produces... Bet Rich Trenholm is already gathering that statistic up ready for another sensationalist article about Iphones.
Melial 3 May, 2012 16:31
Anonymous, that business smartphones statistic was from Good Technology who compete with Blackberry's BIS servers so they don't include Blackberry's in their figures.
However, they are an excellent metric for iOS versus Android devices in business.
Do you have any comment as to why iPads and iPhones have such a huge lead over Android in web browser usage - that one is the real corker.
anonymous 17 May, 2012 21:59
Apple is losing on every level. And the only thing they try to do is stop the android revolution just by law. This is just poor if a company
does not believe that its products itself will do it. In smartphone sales the iPhone is far behind, only with iPad apple is ahead. But this
will change rapidely. Consider that the iPad had a market share of 96% in former times. Now it has come down to 64% which is still high
but a massive lose of money compared to that earlies times. You can see the change in every shop. The iPhone is such uncool, because
it is nothing special. Its was long time a status symbol to show people that someone can afford such a device, even if it is no longer at
the edge of technology. And I see it in the company I am working. We are a technologie base company and our first apps were for
iPhone. But the development takes over to android, because the os allows much more measurements to get out of the smartphone. And
our customer like to have more devices rather than only a few expensive, because it is then possible to cover more areas. For one
iPhone you get 3 android phone, which work better and more reliable.