Apple AAPL-Q has jumped past Research In Motion RIM-T on the list of the world’s Top 5 mobile-phone makers, underscoring the massive popularity of the California technology company’s iPhone.
But perhaps the most stunning statistic related to Apple’s iPhone success is just how much of the mobile phone industry’s profit the company is responsible for – by one estimate, almost 50 per cent.
A survey released Thursday
Apple now sits behind LG, Samsung and Nokia, who control a far larger percentage of the overall market but all lost or gained very little market share during the last quarter, as more consumers switch from traditional cellphones to smart phones such as the BlackBerry and the iPhone.
“[The] mobile phone makers that are delivering popular smart-phone models are among the fastest growing firms,” said IDC senior research analyst Kevin Restivo. “Vendors that aren’t developing a strong portfolio of smart phones will be challenged to maintain and grow market share in the future.”
Mr. Restivo predicts that smart phones will drive the overall mobile phone market until the end of 2014, with 55-per-cent, year-over-year growth in 2010.
But such predictions are perhaps more worrying for traditional handset makers, rather than RIM, which still saw its shipment numbers increase even as it was surpassed by Apple on the IDC list. Of the top three worldwide vendors, only Samsung, which has aggressively pursued a smart-phone strategy based on Google’s Android operating system, saw significant market share growth during the third quarter of 2010. Nokia, the world’s top-selling handset-maker, and LG, both lost ground.
Perhaps the most glaring statistic representing Apple’s success in the smart-phone world came from a report by Canaccord Genuity analyst Michael Walkley, who said that, despite being responsible for only about 4 per cent of the global handset market, Apple generated 47 per cent of the industry’s operating profit during the third quarter of this year.
Smart-phone makers Apple, RIM and HTC were responsible for 71 per cent of mobile phone manufacturers’ operating profits during the quarter, Mr. Walkley said.
Mr. Walkley indicated the strong Apple numbers reinforce comments made by company CEO Steve Jobs during a conference call last week, when he argued Apple’s closed iOS operating system – which powers all iPhones, iPads and some iPods – represents a better model than Google’s open-source Android operating system.
“Longer term, with an installed hardware sales base of over 120M iOS devices (iPhone, iPad, iPod Touch), we believe Apple provides its application developers and therefore its consumers an ecosystem that competitors will struggle to match,” Mr. Walkley wrote.
“In fact, with over 250,000 applications offered and over 5 billion applications downloaded, we believe Apple customers will remain loyal to the company’s products and help drive strong upgrade cycle sales for Apple’s host of new offerings.”
