Normally I don’t care to write much about smartphone profit shares for the various different smartphone manufacturers because, let’s be honest, unless you’re actually working for one of those companies you probably don’t really care. But yesterday I saw a slew of articles about Apple pretty much taking over the profits in the smartphone industry and the numbers are rather staggering. So I’m breaking with my usual here. Bear with me.
So, everyone knows that iPhones are popular. I mean, androids are pretty popular too, but in the smartphone world, iPhones are status symbols. Everyone knows all of this. What everyone might not know is that there are roughly 1,000 smartphone manufacturers making smartphones, and that most of them didn’t do so swell last quarter.
According to the Wall Street Journal, Apple ended up with a whopping 92% of the profits from
all smartphone sales worldwide last quarter. And, as if that number wasn’t impressive enough, out of all of the smartphone sales worldwide, Apple only made up around 20% of the sales. As far as profits goes, Samsung came in right behind Apple with a paltry 15% of the remainder quarterly profits and nearly 25% of the sales.
Now those of you who are good with numbers are probably looking at those two numbers and trying to decide if I actually know how to do math. But, it’s not a mistake. According to WSJ, Apple and Samsung account for more than 100% of the profits because
everyone else lost money on smartphones last quarter (although reportedly a few did break even). Companies that posted a loss included HTC and Microsoft, which
may have finally admitted defeat with its Lumia line.
While this isn’t going to make me swap my android for an iPhone, I suppose that Apple must be doing some things right. 9to5mac took a look at Samsung and Apple
numbers in 2012, and found that profits were pretty evenly split down the middle. That’s a far cry these most recent numbers. Who knows… maybe Apple really is going to take over the world.]]>
