Comments on: iPhone Holding on Against Android as RIM Collapses

By: jfutral

jfutral — Fri, 13 May 2011 17:41:44 +0000

What I am curious about is how many of those “subscribers” are active used phones. What I mean is, what is the basis of those figures? Is it like calculating simple interest? Or is it compounded in some way?

In other words, let’s say we have 20 smartphone users. Is the calculation based on the 20 smartphones those users use, so only 20 smart phones are being counted? Let’s say 10 of those users are Android users, and 10 are iPhone users.

What if those 10 Android users bought new Android phones (either to replace broken units or to upgrade to the latest and greatest), in the one year period studied. Does that figure now become 20 Android subscribers vs 10 iPhone even though we are still only talking about 20 users?

Where this could affect market share figures is since the iPhone does not introduce a new phone except yearly at the earliest, the figures would be skewed since iPhone owners aren’t in a more frequent upgrade cycle.

I don’t know. I could be wrong, but it is a question I wonder about. But there are already strange tactics in calculating market share in any industry, not just cell phones. I remember when many analysts wouldn’t count all of the early iMacs. Each colour would count as a separate number. Even Windows share isn’t based on actual computers running Windows, since MS charged a hardware maker for a Windows license even if the computer sold did not have Windows with it.

Just curious.
Joe

By: Nick

Nick — Wed, 11 May 2011 15:20:14 +0000

Apple has a single leading smartphone device, the iPhone 4, while Android has dozens of leading devices. Things would look drastically different if you compare the iPhone 4 to *each* Android model (where iPhone would clearly be the winner.)

Also, this is US market and not tablets. While stats like this are somewhat helpful in seeing things on a large scale, they’re hardly an indicator of business success/fail.

By: Martin Hill

Martin Hill — Wed, 11 May 2011 13:21:17 +0000

@Kumaran
Yes and I am saying the graph is quite useless.

Let me ask you what possible use it is to compare a single phone from one manufacturer – the iPhone – against hundreds of phones and tablets (yes, comScore’s numbers include tablets like the Dell Streak and Galaxy tab because they have cellular radios and carrier contracts) from dozens of manufacturers that happen to all run the same operating system – Android?

If you answer “to find out which largest represents the largest platform for developers ornadvertisers” then of course you have to include all devices that run iOS as well to have any credibility whatsoever.

You either have to compare smartphone vs smartphone or OS vs OS. You can’t have it half one way and half the other way just so your favorite platform can appear to win.

-Mart

By: Kumaran

Kumaran — Wed, 11 May 2011 03:54:37 +0000

But the title of the graph says “Top US SMARTPHONE OS Platforms,” implying that only the iPhone will be compared with the rest of the market

By: Michael

Michael — Wed, 11 May 2011 03:12:35 +0000

People have abandoned Blackberry and embraced the iPhone and Android because you can buy an app at a reasonable price…and because many are free. I NEVER bought an app for my Blackberry because they were expensive and terrible…but I have hundreds for my iPhone. And….if I had an Android phone…I am sure that I would happily own many for it!

By: Android Applications Development

Android Applications Development — Tue, 10 May 2011 11:25:02 +0000

From past few months Android fails to make any impact in the market and Apple has very slight growth from 25% to 25.5%.Ipod have no competition in the market.I think it can make a great impact in the market.

By: Martin Hill

Martin Hill — Mon, 09 May 2011 21:27:06 +0000

@Todd
No, the WTF is why you think the much smaller smartphone segment of the OS platform is more important than the total OS size and should not even be mentioned in passing when comparing “OS platforms” Do you always only ever compare laptop market share and ignore desktops when comparing Windows to Mac OS X and Linux? No of course you don’t.

We are after all talking “OS platform” here. That’s far more important than the smaller phone subset for developers, advertisers, 3rd party hardware peripheral manufacturers, investors and consumers.

Just because Android is missing in action with viable competitors to the iPod touch and iPad doesn’t mean you can put on the blinkers and ignore half of the iOS platform just so that Android wins.

Cudos to Charles for having the guts to mention in passing the whole picture although he neglected to mention that in Europe iOS is actually 116% bigger then Android in addition to being 59% bigger in the USA.

-Mart

By: william

william — Mon, 09 May 2011 21:17:24 +0000

Not that complicated Todd. Android is an operating system, and so is the iPhone, iPod Touch, and iPad’s iOS. Since we’re basically talking about operating systems, those other devices are relevant.

By: Charles Jade

Charles Jade — Mon, 09 May 2011 20:49:35 +0000

RIM recently cut its profit forecast, sending the stock price tumbling, but months and months before that the company stopped reporting ASPs. RIM is suffering from the same problem that recently had the CEO of Nokia declaring the “platform burning,” losing the high-end and trying in vain to make up for it by selling on the low end. We all know how that worked out for Nokia, and there’s no reason to think it will be any different for RIM. It won’t be until sometime in 2012 that the company will have QNX-based smartphones. Until then, we will continue to see Android and iOS taking chunks out of RIM’s market share, and then, like Microsoft and Windows Phone, RIM will have to attempt to generate developer and consumer interest while abandoning its previous platform. However, unlike Microsoft, RIM has no successful divisions to fall back on, a half-done tablet being hardly worth mentioning.

To quote from the Battlestar Galactica re-imagining, “all this has happened before, and all this will happen again.”

By: CaTiC

CaTiC — Mon, 09 May 2011 20:23:51 +0000

Yet, RIM’s sales have increased (by 30% over last year if I recall). This means that the US smartphone market is expanding (almost explosively) and that almost all smartphone manufacturers are benefiting from such an expansion. Not taking this factor into account in your blog presents RIM unfairly as it would have to outsell Samsung by 33% in order to maintain its 30% market share in the US. Also, note that the US expansion rate is unique as the market share is much different elsewhere in the world.

Finally, note that RIM’s US market share GREW for 2 months following its Playbook announcement; this growth was at the expense of Android and was the fastest growth of all manufacturers. To me, this is a clear indication that US customers are still very much interested in the RIM OS and services.