{"id":3548,"date":"2011-08-07T17:02:44","date_gmt":"2011-08-07T21:02:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/?p=3548"},"modified":"2014-03-13T17:25:48","modified_gmt":"2014-03-13T21:25:48","slug":"the-smartphone-wars-48-and-rising","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/?p=3548","title":{"rendered":"The Smartphone Wars: 48% and rising"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>There&#8217;s been a lot of talk in the trade press over the last month by people who believe &#8211; or want to believe, or want us to think they believe &#8211; that Android&#8217;s momentum is slowing, and in particular that the multicarrier release of the Apple iPhone was a game-changer that will eventually pull Apple back into the dominant position in smartphones.  Most of these talkers have been obvious Apple fanboys; a few have been contrarians, or tired of reporting the same old Android-wins-again stories,\u00a0or merely linkbaiting.<\/p>\n<p>The last week has not been kind to these people.  First, Canalys reported that in a survey of usage in 56 countries, Android has <a href=\"http:\/\/thenextweb.com\/google\/2011\/08\/01\/android-hits-48-smartphone-market-share-but-not-without-troubles\/\">reached 48% market share worldwide<\/a>. Then the comScore figures on US installed base up to June 2011 <a href=\"http:\/\/www.comscore.com\/Press_Events\/Press_Releases\/2011\/8\/comScore_Reports_June_2011_U.S._Mobile_Subscriber_Market_Share\">came out<\/a>, and report only 40% share here. <\/p>\n<p>I think comparing these sources is instructive, particularly with the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.catb.org\/esr\/comscore\/\">longer-term trends<\/a> as context.  It&#8217;s also worth noting a couple of other recent developments that cast doubt on the Apple-comeback scenario.<\/p>\n<p><!--more--><\/p>\n<p>The 40% to 48% discrepancy is easily explained.  With Nokia and RIM in collapse and Microsoft failing to gain traction, the smartphone market is increasingly just a two-horse race &#8211; Android va. Apple.  Android does better against Apple in price-sensitive markets; U.S. consumers are the least price-sensitive in the world and so Apple competes better here.<\/p>\n<p>More interesting, perhaps, is what is <em>not<\/em> happening in the latest figures. Tragically for the contrarians, it is Apple&#8217;s U.S market-share growth rather than Android&#8217;s that has stalled.  Android share growth continues to bucket along at about 2% a month, while Apple&#8217;s shows no increase in the latest figures.  <\/p>\n<p>The future is another country, of course, but right now it looks like those of us who thought that multicarrier iPhone was going to be largely unable to fix Apple&#8217;s long-term positioning problem were correct.  The iPhone&#8217;s market isn&#8217;t exactly saturated in the normal sense, but sales volumes are only growing as fast as the smartphone userbase as a whole; the multicarrier &#8216;breakout&#8217; only netted Apple about a 1% competitive gain, and that gain now appears to be over.<\/p>\n<p>Apple is now relying on smartphones for <a href=\"http:\/\/www.readwriteweb.com\/archives\/iphones_ipads_are_nearly_70_of_apples_revenue.php\">68% of revenue<\/a>, so they&#8217;d be very vulnerable to an actual drop in marketshare.  I&#8217;ve taken a lot of flak for saying the company looks like a late-stage sustainer with a principal product line about to experience disruptive collapse,  but this is yet another straw in the wind.  If next month&#8217;s figures show an actual share drop, expect it to be self-reinforcing and get the hell out of Apple stock.<\/p>\n<p>Meanwhile, the whole smartphone market may be undergoing some sort of subtle shift.  Microsoft didn&#8217;t hemhorrage any share this month, which compared to their performance  since the WP7 release is a major victory for them &#8211; they even gained a few users.  I have no theory about what this means.<\/p>\n<p>HP&#8217;s WebOS has fallen so far (below 2.2%) that comScore has stopped reporting it, probably because it&#8217;s now below their normal statistical noise level. Now they&#8217;re tracking Symbian instead.<\/p>\n<p>In other news, Google is <a href=\"http:\/\/www.ibtimes.com\/welcome.html?surl=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ibtimes.com%2Farticles%2F189726%2F20110730%2Fgoogle-ibm-patents-buy-new-1000.htm\">buying patents from IBM<\/a>, doubtless with the intention of turning the confrontations with Sun and Apple into Mexican standoffs.  My evaluation continues to be that the smartphone patent wars will be like a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury but in the end signifying nothing.<\/p>\n<p>Finally, there&#8217;s really superb article on <a href=\"http:\/\/nfarina.com\/post\/8239634061\/ios-to-android\">Android vs. iOS<\/a>.  Anybody still laboring under the delusion that iOS&#8217;s toolset for app development is unequivocally better than Android&#8217;s should read this.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>There&#8217;s been a lot of talk in the trade press over the last month by people who believe &#8211; or want to believe, or want us to think they believe &#8211; that Android&#8217;s momentum is slowing, and in particular that the multicarrier release of the Apple iPhone was a game-changer that will eventually pull Apple&hellip; <a class=\"more-link\" href=\"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/?p=3548\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">The Smartphone Wars: 48% and rising<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[34],"class_list":["post-3548","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-technology","tag-smartphone-wars","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3548","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3548"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3548\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3565,"href":"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3548\/revisions\/3565"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3548"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3548"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3548"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}