Apple in third place as smartphone shipments soar
Apple has managed to develop the third-best selling smartphone in the world, according to a new report from Canalys.
The market researcher's latest tally of the "smart mobile device" market found that Apple's iPhone had 6.5 percent of the worldwide market in the fourth quarter. That might not sound like a lot, but it's good enough for third place behind Nokia, which has a whopping 53 percent of the market, and Research In Motion, which has 11.4 percent. And last year, of course, Apple had 0.0 percent of this market.
Canalys doesn't provide an exact definition of what exactly constitutes a "smart mobile device" in the press release touting the research, but said it's talking about smartphones, handhelds, and wireless handhelds. That segment comprised about 35.5 million devices in the fourth quarter, a small fraction of the overall cell phone market's 300 million units in the fourth quarter.
Apple's iPhone is the third-leading smartphone in the world, behind Nokia and RIM.
(Credit: CNET Networks)But it's growing quickly: 60 percent from 2006 to 2007, and 71 percent from last year's fourth quarter to this year's, according to Canalys. Asia and Europe purchase the bulk of the world's smartphones, but shipments to the U.S. doubled last year.
In the U.S., Apple's actually in second place behind RIM's BlackBerry, outpacing Palm and, believe it or not, all Windows Mobile devices combined. The company managed fifth place in Europe during the quarter, despite shipping the iPhone in just the U.K., Germany, and France--and starting almost midway through the quarter.
Don't see 6.5 percent and assume that Apple has already hit CEO Steve Jobs' goal of 1 percent market share by the end of 2008. Jobs was referring to the overall market at the time the iPhone was launched, which was doing about 1 billion units a year. Still, it's excellent progress for Apple in its first year in the market, and shows that even if Apple can't control how people use the iPhone, people want it.
Another interesting tidbit from the release: Shipments of Linux-based smartphones were flat in 2007, despite the strong growth in almost every other segment of the market. That's Google's hope for Android, that it can take the promise of a mobile operating system based on Linux and actually get some traction.
Tom Krazit writes about the ever-expanding world of Internet search, including Google, Yahoo, online advertising, and portals, as well as the evolution of mobile computing. He has written about traditional PC companies, chip manufacturers, and mobile computers, spending the last three years covering Apple. E-mail Tom. 
35 million / 300 million * 0.065 share = 0.76 percent. That's
actually not too far from 1% of new sales.
If Steve meant he wants 1% of new sales going forward, that's
pretty close. If he meant he wants 1% of all smart phones to be
iPhones, or 1% of all mobile phones, or even 1% of all phones
everywhere, well -that might be a bit harder.
I told you so. Repeatedly.
Do you believe me now?
/P
you nailed it man, you were so right. You do understand that "strong growth in almost every other segment of the market" would also include Windows Mobile, right?
combined devices.
What was it Ballmer said?
"There's no chance that the iPhone is going to get any significant
market share. No chance."
YouTube:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hadxBZWxNrs
Once again an apple fan boy tilts the results to make himself happy. That's ok though, it's a cool phone but don't make it sound like no one is buying the other stuff.
- iPhone = Enterprise Nightmare
- by fred dunn February 6, 2008 7:25 AM PST
- Our most secure mobile devices are BlackBerry Handhelds that are connected through our server so that if a device is lost, stolen, misplaced, or whatever we can centrally and remotely wipe the device, lock the device, or Kill the device.
- Like this Reply to this comment
-
(16 Comments)The second most secure (believe it or not) are the Windows Mobile in conjunction with Exchange 2003 SP2 with OMA (Outlook Mobile Access) which essentially gives us the same capabilities.
The iPhone has no such centrally managed service and hence if the phone is lost or stolen then the user's data is available and can even be used by the thief until AT&T cuts service but even then they still have the data which in the case of an Enterprise device is unacceptable.
I don't understand why Apple doesn't put a management piece on the fast-track other than it isn't too concerned with Enterprise sales.