Wednesday 18 September 2013

Every Cloud??


Apple Keeps Losing Market

It might remain invisible, but Apple keeps fast sliding towards a state where it would end up with the same share of smartphones market that it has for personal computers. Although many reports claim that Apple is the top smartphone manufacturer, such claims don’t really shine any light on how enormous or competitive the market really is.
According to the latest research, Apple accounts for only 13% of the smartphones on the market – moreover, this number keeps falling. For example, last quarter it was 16%. In the meantime, Samsung has a larger market share than Apple, while the rest of the market is mainly occupied by other Android devices. Indeed, Google’s Android OS has increased its global market share to almost 80% in the 2nd quarter of 2013 from 70% at the same period in 2012.

The worst result was shown by BlackBerry, whose market share dropped to 3% from 5% last year, falling even behind Microsoft – the latter is now number 4 in OS share. The industry observers admit that the main reason Apple is still doing so well is because its iPhones are so much more expensive than Android gear, which means a higher profit margin. If you exclude subsidies from phone companies, you will figure out that an average iPhone cost $710 last year, which is almost $300 more than the average smartphone.

On the other hand, that higher price tag is also denting mass sales, with the experts estimating that the company’s 2nd-quarter profit was $6 billion with an operating margin of 33%. Now compare that to Samsung’s profit of $5.6 billion with a 19% operating margin and make a conclusion.

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