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Android Hits 73% of Global Smartphone Market
eldavojohn writes "Gartner's released a report on worldwide numbers of 2012 3Q phone sales and the staggering results posted from Android have caused people like IW's Eric Zeman to call for sanity. Keep in mind these are worldwide numbers, which might be less surprising when you realize that the biggest growth market of them all is China, which is more than 90% Android. It's time to face the facts and realize that Android now owns 73% of the worldwide smartphone market. While developers bicker over which platform is best for development and earnings, the people of the world may be making the choice based on just how inexpensive an Android smartphone can be. This same time last year, Gartner reported Android at 52.5% of market share and it now sits at 72.4% market share with over 122 million units sold worldwide."
Why would you care?
Do you care if the company that makes your other things profits?
I am at odds with these companies, I am trying to get the best price for the best goods. They are trying to get the most money.
Eventually the market will be overwhelmed (if not already) by the number of Android phones. At some point the developers will stop and realize there's a whole lot of people in the other ecosystem.
Now hopefully they actually write an app that uses Android properly instead of some stupid iOS port - I've seen so many that are hard to use on Android because of this.
The big thing is that Android is going on cheaper phones - we just got a plain phone here at work with a keyboard for texting, it came with Android and it was a whopping $150 to buy outright. It's no wonder the shipments/sales have taken off.
Not everyone needs a $600 smartphone, and it's an oversight on Apple's part.
This is a total re-play of the IBM/Apple race for PC market. Google is the IBM in this scenario. Next logical prediction would be Apple is going into crisis in a few years and looks for a new Steve Jobs to come up with something new entirely for which another competitor will play the IBM card.
I think that speaks more to how overpriced Apple products are. How do you think that they have $100 billion in cash?
Not really. I think it speaks to the nature of the market Apple sells into. The iPhone is similarly priced to phones like the Galaxy SIII and other top tier Android handsets, but the 73% of global marketshare is certainly not all phones of the SIII's calibre - there are going to be a lot of much cheaper phones in there (Samsung itself sells a cheaper baby brother version of the S-class).
Apple makes the bulk of the cash because it focuses on a small slice of the market, with a highly tuned product (ie, with few options) and in certain markets (such as the US) accounts for 40% or more of the market with that small line.
They have $100 billion in cash because they've been sitting on it it for some time not paying dividends (although they do now), and having multiple highly profitable product lines since the launch of the original iMac.
The fact remains, that the iPhone costs almost the same as a top Android handset. It costs *a lot* more than the average Android handset price though... but so does the SIII.
Android comes in so many different varieties. I need a slideout keyboard - no problem, lots of choices. iPhone? Forget about it - one size is supposed to fit all. Need a stylus? Nope. Need a bigger screen? Nope. Smaller screen? Nope. Multiple physical keys? Nope. Add a Micro SD card? Nope. NFC? Nope. FM radio chip? Nope. No choice = smaller sales.
It might turn out to be like computers. Apple does not have a large marketshare of computers compared to Dell or HP; however, they are highly profitable even though they have lower sales.
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
The fact remains, that the iPhone costs almost the same as a top Android handset. It costs *a lot* more than the average Android handset price though... but so does the SIII.
Well, like any market with high end offerings and low end offerings, the high end is making up for the thin margins at the low end. If Generic Android Handset Free with 2 Year Contract wasn't sold at cost to the cell providers, there would be no need to inflate the price on the high end to cover development.
Apple doesn't really make a low end anything. Even the iPod Shuffle and Mac Mini are not positioned as competition against commodity mp3 players and cheap PCs.
More Twoson than Cupertino
Apple didn't lose half their share. The market's absolute size increased, with Android being the main player in that growth, thus Apple's part of the pie shrank even if in absolute numbers it didn't.
Also, if I'm not mistaken those are market share statistics and not sales statistics. Market share won't be quite as affected by the pre-upgrade slump, because an important proportion of iPhone 5 buyers are iPhone owners.
Maybe because you want the company, and the android ecosystem as a whole, to thrive?
Actually, since there is more than one Android phone maker, I don't care that much about wether one of them thrives, as long as the ecosystem Android does.
So far all of my smartphones have been made by HTC.
Now, HTC doesn't look very healthy right now.
Still, I care about using an Android phone more than about that phone being made by HTC, so while I hope HTC recovers, it wouldn't hurt me that much if they don't.
That's one of the advantages of an ecosystem vs. a monoculture.
Actually, a 64GB iP5 is about twice as expensive as a 64GB GS3, thanks the SD cards' lower price. There's a wide gap at 32GB too.
The Cloud - because you don't care if your apps and data are up in the air.
I would if most of those were at a current OS version. Hell even 4.0... but 90% are still at nothing higher than 2.3.5 and that is utter crap.
I love my Nexus, but I feel really bad for peopel that bought a phone from a crap maker that will not push out updates in a timely manner.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
Oh my hell, you Apple fanbois are in so much denial. It's because of China? Really?
Don't forget to mention some totally irrelevent fact like "Oh yeah, but most of those phones aren't running the latest version althoughactuallyios6ononeiphoneisntthesameasios6onanother!" or "Well I'm a developer and iOS makes me so much more money I stopped even bothering to support Android a few years ago andhavenoideawhatthesituationwouldbeifididsupportitnow."
Here's the deal: Android is leading the way making smartphones available to everyone. Proper smartphones. Y'know, that conform to the original definition before Jobs changed it to "A phone with a PDA built-in that the manufacturer has complete control over."
I think that's fantastic. I have issues with modern smartphones, not least the stupid battery lives, but I think it's great that such a fantasticly useful tool is in the hands of almost everyone these days. That's worth celebrating. If you happen to like some rival to Android, and the figures don't seem to suggest that they're the ones putting smartphones in people's hands, take it up with them. Stop dissing the one group that's got it right.
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
I think it's pretty damn cool.
I mean, that the mainstream avg person sees linux as the OS for nerdy, contrarian, anti-establishment type peoples (ie, Linux) and it now become itself mainstream in that it basically runs the cell phone world (yes i know linux servers have runt he net for years...but thats not mainstream)
And then it gets even cooler when you consider that iOS, still with the same familiar looks Apple has long been known for, is derived from Unix (via OSX).
Flamewar? Bah. Just a bit of sibling rivalry as they curb stomp Windows into oblivion in the largest/quickest growing platform market.
The guy who said the election was rigged won the presidency with the second-most votes.
Well of course you are right in nearly everything you have said :)
However, I would vigorously dispute your last sentence. I have an iPhone sitting here right next to my S3. Putting them side by side, there are only two things that strike me as being "pros" for the iPhone. 1) It looks nice. 2) It syncs better with Itunes on a Mac. Other than that, I really struggle to think of anything that is not considerably better on the S3. I have 3 Macs, I have two iPads and all the iPhones except 5 so Im not exactly an Apple hater but this S3 has rather opened my eyes to what the rest of the world has been doing while Ive been playing with my iPhone all these years,