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Samsung & Apple lose smartphone market share as Chinese brands continue to grow

The latest Gartner data (below) shows that both market leader Samsung and second-placed Apple lost market share in the first quarter of the year as Chinese brands continued to increase their sales.

Samsung saw its market share fall from 23.3% in Q1 2016 to 20.7% in the same quarter this year. Gartner said that the company was suffering from strong competition in low-cost smartphones in particular …


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Latest Gartner data shows Samsung topped by Apple in market share during Q4 2016

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Apple Holds Press Event To Introduce New iPhone

Gartner today is out with its latest report concerning the smartphone industry during the fourth quarter of 2016. According to the data, global sales of smartphones to users totaled 432 million units during the quarter, an increase of 7 percent compared to the year before.

Perhaps most notably, Q4 2016 saw Apple leapfrog Samsung to become the number 1 global smartphone vendor….


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Samsung’s market share suffered its biggest ever drop following Note 7 disaster – Gartner

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The September 2 recall and subsequent cancellation of the Note 7 saw Samsung’s Q3 market share fall year-on-year from 23.6% to 19.2% – the biggest drop in its history, said Gartner.

Samsung’s smartphone sales in the third quarter of 2016 as a whole declined 14.2 percent year over year — their worst performance ever. Samsung’s previous worst performance for smartphone sales was a 12.3 percent drop in the fourth quarter of 2014.

Research director Anshul Gupta said that the launch of the Galaxy S8 would be a crucial test for the company’s fate …


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Gartner: Android smartphone marketshare dropped 1.9% in early 2015

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Gartner today released the results of a report on worldwide smartphone marketshare in Q1 2015 (first three months) which most notably found that Android’s hold on the smartphone OS market dropped 1.9% while Apple’s iOS saw it’s third consecutive quarter of gains. The research firm attributed Android’s loss largely to Apple’s newfound success in China – where Android saw a 4% decline over its share of that market last year –  on the back of the larger-screened iPhone 6 and 6 Plus, as well as increased differentiation and ecosystem lock-in through offerings like Apple Pay and Apple Watch.
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Gartner: Chromebook sales up 24 percent over 2014, still huge in education

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Gartner today released the results of a report finding that Chromebooks in 2015 have continued to see double-digit year-over-year growth for Google with education still as the primary market for browser-based computers. 7.3 million Chromebook units are expected to be sold in 2015, a 27 percent increase over 2014, while 72 percent of those sales are expected to be from the education sector.

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In the above chart breaking down Chromebook sales for 2014 by region and segment, you can see education held the lion’s share in all the major markets Google sells to, with consumer sales coming in second, and sales to the business segment trailing far behind – save for in Asia Pacific, where those latter two are reversed.
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Gartner: iPhone sales led Q4 2014, but Samsung won year where 1b smartphones were sold

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Gartner is out with its latest report tracking smartphone movement during the previous year and more specifically the holiday quarter.

Headlining the report is news that over 1 billion smartphones were sold in 2014, a data point IDC first said was hit in the previous year, adding that two out of three phones sold last year qualified as smartphones.

Gartner’s data shows Apple topped Samsung in worldwide smartphone sales with 74,832,000 units shipped during the holiday quarter, just 1.8 million units more than Samsung, giving Apple 20.4% market share for the quarter, a virtual tie with Samsung’s 19.9%.

Coming up behind Apple and Samsung is Lenovo (which includes sales of Motorola-branded phones), Huawei, and Xiaomi with single digit market share. The collective group of others which amount to 42.4% of the holiday quarter sales.
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Gartner: Samsung continues to slow amidst Xiaomi growth in China

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Gartner today published its third quarter numbers, showing overall growth in the smartphone market and a strong quarter for Apple. Mobile devices overall saw as many as 456 million sold with smartphones taking a 301 million slice of that pie, which comes out to a solid 66% (up 20% from last year). This shift in the market seems to be hurting Samsung and Nokia the most, because while the Korean giant is still leading the pack, this year smaller companies with slimmer margins seem to be taking some of its foothold.


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Fewer than 0.01 percent of mobile apps will be financially successful by 2018, predicts Gartner

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If developers are finding it difficult to make money from apps today, things are only going to get tougher, according to a forecast by Gartner (via TechCrunch). Looking at the period through to 2018, Gartner predicts that fewer than one in 10,000 apps will be considered financially successful by their developers.

“The vast number of mobile apps may imply that mobile is a new revenue stream that will bring riches to many,” said Ken Dulaney, vice president and distinguished analyst at Gartner. “However, our analysis shows that most mobile applications are not generating profits.”

While this may not necessarily be a bad thing for major brands, who Gartner note may use apps to build brand recognition and product awareness, small developers have a much harder time getting their apps noticed, as consumers increasingly turn to recommendations and advertising to make their selections.

Gartner predicts that by 2017, 94.5 percent of apps will be free or freemium, suggesting that advertising and in-app purchases will become an increasingly important source of income. The company also expects browser-based apps to grow in popularity as the HTML5 standard matures.

Smart finally beats dumb, smartphones hitting 51.8 percent of global sales in Q2

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Image: gawkerassets.com

Image: gawkerassets.com

In the circles most of us hang out, it might seem incredible that featurephones – aka dumb phones – were still outselling smartphones until recently, but that was indeed the case right up to the first quarter of this year. The latest Gartner figures show that smartphones finally broke ahead in Q2, achieving 51.8 percent of worldwide phone sales.

Smartphones accounted for 51.8 percent of mobile phone sales in the second quarter of 2013, resulting in smartphone sales surpassing feature phone sales for the first time,” said Anshul Gupta, principal research analyst at Gartner. Asia/Pacific, Latin America and Eastern Europe exhibited the highest smartphone growth rates of 74.1 percent, 55.7 percent and 31.6 percent respectively, as smartphone sales grew in all regions …

There was good news for both Samsung and Google in the figures … 
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Gartner: Apple and Samsung capture almost half of smartphone market in Q3, Android passes 70 percent share

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Worldwide Mobile Device Sales to End Users by Operating System in 3Q12

Gartner is out with its quarterly report for worldwide mobile device sales by vendor and OS for the third quarter. While reporting an overall 3 percent decline in mobile phone sales, the smartphone category hit 169.2 million units in Q3, a 47 percent increase from the year-ago quarter. While Apple is still third to Samsung and Nokia for total mobile device sales, Samsung and Apple remain the top smartphone vendors collectively, capturing 46.5-percent of the market. Meanwhile, Nokia slipped from No. 3 smartphone vendor in Q2 to No. 7 in Q3. This made room for RIM and HTC behind Apple and Samsung in the third and fourth positions.

With sales of 23.6 million units in the third quarter for Apple (up 36.2-percent year-on-year), Gartner reported Samsung has widened its lead on Apple with almost 55 million smartphones in the quarter and strong demand for its Galaxy line. Samsung once again takes the top vendor position for smartphones with 32.5-percent of the market:

Samsung’s mobile phones sales continued to accelerate, totaling almost 98 million units in the third quarter of 2012 (see Table 1), up 18.6 percent year-on-year. Samsung saw strong demand for Galaxy smartphones across different price points, and it further widened the gap with Apple in the smartphone market, selling 55 million smartphones in the third quarter of 2012. It commanded 32.5 percent of the global smartphone market in the third quarter of 2012.

As for the race between Android and iOS, Gartner’s numbers show Android increased its marketshare nearly 20 percentage points in the quarter to 72.4-percent of the market, up from just 52.5-percent in the year-ago quarter. In comparison, Apple now accounts for 13.9-percent of the market, down from 15 percent last year, but Gartner expects that to change in Q4 thanks to the continuing iPhone 5 roll out:
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Analyst: Google to sell 2.9M Nexus 7s in Q3, 8M by the end of 2012

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Shortly after becoming available in the United States and Canada at various retailers and Google Play in mid-July, we reported Google suspended orders of the 16GB version while reports claimed the company had simply sold out of initial supplies. It would take Google weeks to restock the device, according to reports, but the 16GB model was again available on the store just a week later. Today, we get a look at just how many Nexus 7 tabs Google might have sold with analyst Sameer Singh estimating 6- to- 8 million units sold by the end of 2012 (via ComputerWorld):

Google could sell between six million and eight million of its $199 Nexus 7 tablets by year’s end, according to a new estimate… That’s more than double the three million Google expected to sell by the end of 2012, after putting the device on sale in July and seeing the 16GB version sell-out briefly… The estimate, based on projections using expected shipments of four million touch panels for the Nexus 7 in the third quarter 2012,

Google has not released any sales data related to the device and declined to comment on the estimates. Singh’s estimates definitely blow by the “1.5 million units in five weeks” estimated by Gartner. The estimate of 8 million units by year’s end is also significantly higher than Gartner’s estimates. According to Singh, “Google and Asus may have roughly doubled their [sales] estimates and cranked up the production volume.” Singh explained how he used panel orders to come up with his estimates:
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Samsung & Apple take half of global smartphone market, Android & iOS hit 80 percent

Research firm Gartner released its numbers today for “Worldwide Mobile Device Sales” during Q1 2012. There are not many surprises in the report when it comes to Apple, but Gartner estimated Samsung sold 38 smartphones during the quarter, which is less than the 42.2 million estimated by IDC earlier this month and more than the 32 million by IHS iSuppli. With Apple confirming 35.1 million iPhones sold during the quarter, Gartner’s numbers put Samsung as the both the No. 1 smartphone and overall mobile device vendor. The report also noted Samsung and Apple together accounted for 49.3-percent of the global smartphone sales, which is up from just 29.3 percent in Q1 of last year:

“The continued roll-out of third generation (3G)-based smartphones by local and regional manufacturers such as Huawei, ZTE, Lenovo, Yulong and TCL Communication should help spur demand in China. In addition, the arrival of new products in mature markets based on new versions of the Android and Windows Phone operating systems (OSs), and the launch of the Apple iPhone 5 will help drive a stronger second half in Western Europe and North America. However, as we are starting to update our market forecast we feel a downward adjustment to our 2012 figures, in the range of 20 million units, is unavoidable.”

On the platform side, Gartner’s report estimated both Android and iOS accounted for 79 percent of global smartphone sales—up from just 53.3-percent in Q1 2011. Of that 80 percent, Android grabbed 56.1-percent, which is slightly higher than the 51 percent of the United States market, according to estimates from comScore earlier this month. Apple took in the remaining 22.9-percent, which is less than the 30.7-percent comScore estimated for the U.S. market:

Gartner analysts said the smartphone market has become highly commoditized and differentiation is becoming a challenge for manufacturers. “At the high end, hardware features coupled with applications and services are helping differentiation, but this is restricted to major players with intellectual property assets. However, in the mid to low-end segment, price is increasingly becoming the sole differentiator. This will only worsen with the entry of new players and the dominance of Chinese manufacturers, leading to increased competition, low profitability and scattered market share.”

Android = iOS + RIM + Microsoft + Other

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Gartner is out with their first quarter 2011 mobile phone market survey. The results are astounding. The first quarter belonged to Google and everyone else was reduced to extras in an Android show. Both Apple and Google grew their respective share of the smartphone market, estimated at 100.8 million quarterly units – nearly double the 54.5 million units from the year-ago quarter. Smartphones grew 85 percent and cut into sales of regular handsets, accounting for almost one quarter (23.6 percent) of the 427.8 million handsets shipped during the first quarter.

Predictably, Android was the leading smartphone platform in the first quarter of 2011. And here comes your mind-boggling takeaway: More Android-powered smartphones were sold during the first quarter than the combined sales of Apple’s iPhone, RIM’s BlackBerrys, Microsoft Windows Phone smartphones and vendors belonging to the Other OS category. And that is worldwide, mind you. Go ahead, do the math yourself (the below table).

It’s fascinating that Microsoft and Symbian combined had three percentage points lower market share than Android. Also, while Apple doubled iPhone sales,  they barely gained any marketshare. This just shows that Android is gobbling up market share at a rapid pace, eating pretty much everyone’s lunch in the process…


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