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Huawei Passes Apple For Second Place In Smartphone Shipments (venturebeat.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from VentureBeat: For the first time in seven years, Samsung and Apple have not taken the top two positions in the worldwide smartphone market. All hail Huawei. Although Samsung held onto first place -- the South Korean giant typically dominates the first three quarters of the year, with the American company winning the fourth quarter -- Huawei passed Apple for second place this part quarter. The Q2 2018 figures come from IDC (though Canalys and Strategy Analytics both agree that Huawei passed Apple in the quarter).
It's not surprising: the iPhone X has been a disaster. Quick informal poll: anyone ever see anyone with one in the wild?
Actually, if you look at the table in the article, it looks like Huawei’s success is coming at Samsung’s and less popular Android manufacturer’s loss. Apple grew their market share and their total units sold this last year, while Samsung sold about 8 million fewer units and lost a significant amount of share.
Plus, Apple’s average selling price is way up from a year ago (as reported in their earnings call yesterday), suggesting the iPhone X is selling quite well. Which makes sense, since it was separately reported that it was the best selling smartphone in the US for the two quarters after it launched (and yes, I’ve seen a number of them in the wild). As for the phone that outsold it this last quarter? It was the iPhone 8.
When a company grows its market share, increases units sold, increases average selling price, and posts record numbers, stocks tend to do okay.
The reason Apple dropped to second is because Huawei has been knocking it out of the park at Samsung’s expense. Samsung shed over 10% of their market share YoY. Apple grew their share, though not as fast as Huawei did, suggesting that it’s mostly Android manufacturers canabalizing each other’s sales and share.
That's not the case for phones. People at least want to make phone calls with them.
tbh a lot of people wouldn't miss it if their phone stopped making calls.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
Dead? Far from it. But Apple is doing what MS has been doing since the 90s: Moving through inertia. The engine is off.
Juggernauts like Apple can do this. Even with no new products, Apple would still make acceptable profits for a while. Apple store, accessories, repairs and add-on sales would certainly keep the revenue going. But they would be living off products that they already designed, created, made and sold. That can keep a company the size of Apple afloat for a couple years.
After that, the Juggernaut is dead in the water. And as any oil tanker captain will tell you, getting a huge thing like that moving again takes a LOT of fuel for very, very little gain in the first couple days.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Dead? Far from it. But Apple is doing what MS has been doing since the 90s: Moving through inertia. The engine is off.
Juggernauts like Apple can do this. Even with no new products, Apple would still make acceptable profits for a while. Apple store, accessories, repairs and add-on sales would certainly keep the revenue going. But they would be living off products that they already designed, created, made and sold. That can keep a company the size of Apple afloat for a couple years.
After that, the Juggernaut is dead in the water. And as any oil tanker captain will tell you, getting a huge thing like that moving again takes a LOT of fuel for very, very little gain in the first couple days.
So what game changing revolutionary new products had Huawei brought to the mobile market recently? ... or to the Tech market in general?
The X is only the icing on the shit sundae. The problem runs far deeper, and if Cook doesn't get his head out of his ass (or the proverbial stick) this is not going to end well for Apple.
Apple has more money than they can spend. Apple could put out crap for a decade and still be a fully functioning major player in world technology. Apple's finances are so strong, Cook probably couldn't sink Apple even if he deliberately set out to do just that.
"That's the way to do it" - Punch
While they have had new products that were huge successes since Jobs (AirPods, Apple Watch seems to be doing exceptionally well) the real growth of Apple's business will be in services. They sell a premium product and they have been increasing their average selling price. There are only so many people they can sell products too, there's a ceiling on that hardware growth. So now they focus on services, which is growing extremely well.
What specific indicators are you seeing that suggests Apple is only moving on inertia? Even when Jobs was alive they were not producing a completely new massively successful product every year. You had basically iPod, iPhone, iPad (which everyone on Slashdot called "a big iPhone). And that was from 2001 to 2010. Since his death in 2011 we've had: AirPods, iPad Pro, Apple Watch, Apple Music, Siri, TouchID/FaceID, etc etc. It seems to me that they are still moving forward pretty well without Jobs.
It's not surprising: the iPhone X has been a disaster.
Um, about that:
http://www.abc.net.au/news/201...
The company's chief financial officer Luca Maestri said customers were buying costlier models, and the $US999 iPhone X was the best seller.
Apple posted third-quarter revenue of $US53.3 billion and profits of $US2.34 per share, and forecast its revenue would be between $US60 billion and $US62 billion in the fourth quarter.
So. while Huawei is selling more phones, Apple is selling more expensive phones and making more profit in the process.
you are calling TouchID a product? Seriously?
Look at the chart and you'll see that the other half came at the expense of "Other" manufacturers, meaning it was churn within the Android ecosystem, since there essentially isn't anyone else. And yeah, Google definitely is the winner here, and I too wouldn't be surprised if Xiaomi overtakes Apple.
I have always bought flagship phones in the past, but this cycle I bought a mid tier Motorola and it's awesome. It's plenty big, thin, lightweight, beautiful screen and camera, responsive, plenty of memory, not loaded with crapware, looks great. Exactly why do I need or want a flagship then?
When all you have is a hammer, every problem starts to look like a thumb.
In the meantime, AAPL is up and up and up.
Realistically, AAPL is up only 2.5% vs same day last week. But if you think it's only going up and up, then by all means, mortgage your house and load up.
Why do you suppose that AAPL only only got a 2.5% bump when earnings went up almost 16%? Somebody smarter than you is a bit nervous.
When all you have is a hammer, every problem starts to look like a thumb.
Apple’s average selling price is way up from a year ago
What could possibly go wrong with that?
Not much, actually, at least with the way that Apple is doing it.
There are lots of different ways to push average selling price (ASP) up. One way to inflate ASP is to simply raise the price points for your products. Raising ASP that way does come with a number of downsides, chief among them being the possibility of alienating price-conscious consumers who are unwilling to pay more. But that isn't what Apple did here.
Instead, what Apple did was introduce a new, higher-tier product that expanded their product line's upper end while leaving their existing price points intact for customers who had no interest in paying more. By doing it that way, they provided willing customers with the opportunity to pay Apple more money, while leaving the option open for price-conscious customers to remain at the price point that they are comfortable paying.
The quarters that followed were effectively an experiment to see whether or not there would be a significant number of willing customers, and by all indications, there have been. With ASP being way up on a YoY basis while unit sales have grown slightly, there is quite clearly a willingness among a large number of their customers to pay more than they were before. Apple recognized that willingness and cashed in on it by offering something that allowed those willing consumers to pay more, which, so far as I can see, is a perfectly valid, sustainable strategy with no significant downsides.
If later this year they introduce the iPhone X's successor at the X's current pricing while not offering a successor to the iPhone 8 line, then we'd be talking about a situation that could go wrong for them, since they'd be driving away a number of their existing customers at that point, but that's all speculation about future choices, rather than anything based in fact.
Apple hasn't achieved market saturation until Windows is at 10% and macOS at 90%, and not until Android is at 7% and iOS is at 95%.
You live on a different planet than the rest of us. On the planet we live on, Apple's smartphone market share peaked in 2009 at 48% and has declined steadily ever since, to less than 17% today. There is no reason to suppose that that trend will stop. Maybe it will eventually stabilize around 5% like the MacOS share of the PC market.
When all you have is a hammer, every problem starts to look like a thumb.
If we look at BRANDS, Q2 is Samsung first (loosing share), Huawei second (gaining share fast) and Apple Third (ganing share slowly).
But, if we look at MANUFACTURERS, Samsung is first (losing share), BBK is second (gainig share fast), Huawei is third (gaining share fast) and Apple is fourth (gainig share slowly).
Samsung and Aplle only have their namesake brands, while Huawei has the Huawei and Honor Brands, and BBK has the Oppo, Vivo, OnePlus and other brands in their stable.
*** Suerte a todos y Feliz dia!
Since you are having trouble understanding what could go wrong by trying to get more money out of each customer, let me spell it out for you: Apple did not add any differentialtion to its product, but raised the price anyway. How elastic is that price, really? Bad luck for Apple if the answer turns out to be "not very". Using myself as a data point, I dropped $400 on a new phone this cycle. If I had followed my normal practice of picking up a flagship phone it would have been $1000. But the phone I got is way better than the one it replaced and I just don't perceive any important difference between this and a flagship. I mean, what's the point? Even as a fashion accessory, a nice phone stopped being a status symbol some time ago and is just something everybody has. In fact there a kind of anti-status thing going on. Flashing the Apple logo around marks you as vain, status conscious, fiscally irresponsible, etc. It's a real thing.
Well. Apple will need to sell next year's model for $1200 to match this year's revenue increase, factoring in another 1% or so of market share decline. Think that will fly? I don't.
When all you have is a hammer, every problem starts to look like a thumb.
if you look at "expensive phones", Apple has a _huge_ part of that, probably 60%
I'm not sure exactly what the share is in that sector, but it's not as high as that. Samsung's and Google's phones are expensive too, and so are all the other flagships. But that is nothing to crow about, rather it's a vulnerability. The days of phone as status symbol are slipping into history, and Apple's innovation stream dried up, weakening the brand. I'm having trouble seeing how Apple positions itself as a luxury brand going forward.
When all you have is a hammer, every problem starts to look like a thumb.