Rookie smartphone manufacturer HMD Global reportedly managed to sell a boatload of intelligent Nokia devices last year, coming very close to the global top ten OEMs.
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Q2 2017 tablet sales were down 3.4 percent year over year globally, despite big gains reported by three of the world's top five vendors.
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There's good and bad news for US mobile users in OpenSignal's latest "State of LTE" report. Basically, LTE speeds are horrible, but availability is great.
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Apple has always been about hardware profits first, volumes second, refusing time and time again to release lower-cost iPhones tailor-made for emerging mobile markets, also keeping the price (and quality) bar of iPads and Macs constantly high.
But margins are nothing if you don’t sell enough products to actually accumulate hefty financial gains, and with the exception of the just-ended year, the Cupertino-based tech giant has managed to steadily increase its shipment numbers in addition to the bottom line.
2017 should not only mark a return of that all-winning Apple trend, according to Gartner’s latest industry projections, but “for the first time this century”, push iOS and macOS devices ahead of Microsoft’s Windows-powered products in global sales.
If these predictions are correct, Apple will rack up 268 million unit shipments this year, up from 248 in 2016, and 252 for Windows, which will apparently sink yet again, from an already modest 260 million total.
The gap between the new silver medalist and the bronze underachiever may grow to 24, then 28 million units in 2018 and 2019 respectively, as the combined iOS + macOS tally should continue to jump at a decent pace, while Microsoft is expected to stop the Windows bleeding, but settle for stagnation.
Of course, Android will comfortably remain in the lead, although its own growth has considerably slowed down of late, with no apparent hopes of a short-term acceleration.
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Despite a reported annual growth of 7.5 percent, the global smartphone market arguably went through one of its toughest quarters yet between July and September 2016. At the top of the manufacturer ranks, both Samsung and Apple lost precious share, while the further consolidated OS duopoly looks on the verge of turning into a dangerous monopoly.
But that’s strictly speaking from a sales volume standpoint, because iPhones somehow yielded 103.6 percent of the industry’s Q3 profits, considerably up from an already impressive 90 percent or so during the same period of last year.
How is it even mathematically possible for a single device vendor to rack up all of such a seemingly lucrative and competitive market’s financial gains, and then some? It’s simple: almost no one else in the business made any money at the end of the day, with LG and HTC singled out as the quarter’s biggest, highest-profile losers.
Samsung, meanwhile, was both a profit and shipment winner, though its piece of the worldwide earnings pie shrunk from 11 percent in Q3 2015 and 14 for the whole year to under 1 percent now. 0.9, to be exact, as Galaxy Note 7 damage control strategies mostly failed. No words on Huawei’s performance in recent BMO Capital Markets analysis, with the rising star’s ambitions still focused mainly on sales numbers.
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It’s funny how three separate market research firms have released different global Q3 smartphone shipment estimates in the past week or so, also choosing to focus their analysis on distinct aspects of the current and future state of the mobile ecosystem.
While GfK believes industry demand totaled 353 million units between July and September, anticipating a prospective historic decline next year, and IDC counted nearly 363 mil smartphones shipped worldwide, of which Samsung retained the lion’s share, Strategy Analytics now tops both approximations, going all the way up to 375M.
That would mark a cool 6 percent annual growth, the fastest such rate in 12 months, and it’s mostly thanks to strong performances from Android device vendors across Asia and Africa Middle East, “particularly India and South Africa.”
But you have to figure the world-leading mobile OS did adequate business, at the very least, elsewhere too, since it commanded a record-high 88 percent of the grand smartphone sales total around the globe. That’s more than 3 percentage points up from Q3 2015, while iOS lost a point and a half and 3.5 millions of units, with BlackBerry and Windows Phone all but dead “due to strategic shifts”, and Tizen and “other emerging platforms softened as a result of limited product portfolios and modest developer support.”
Combined, every other platform besides Android and iOS barely added up to 1.3 million unit sales and 0.3 percent share during Q3 2016, which is officially too insignificant to be taken seriously.
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October 2016 was a historic month for smartphone and tablet users, according to independent web analytics company StatCounter, which found that for the first time ever, mobile traffic exceeded desktop internet consumption all in all worldwide.
Seeing as how PC sales have plummeted in recent years, with Wi-Fi and cellular-enabled intelligent mobile devices continuously rising, albeit at a slower pace in the past few quarters, you could say this transition was a long time coming.
Still, StatCounter measured a substantial popularity gap of more than 14 percent between desktop and mobile platforms just last November, and it’s a little shocking to report on-the-go internet usage escalated from under 43 to 51.3 percentage points in the meantime, while computers and laptops only accounted for 48.7 percent of global web surfing this past month, down nearly 10 points since late 2015.
You should keep in mind that technically smartphones haven’t surpassed desktops by themselves yet, combining with tablets for the 51.3 percent share, although “small businesses, sole traders and professionals” still need to deem this trend a major “wake up call to make sure that their websites are mobile friendly.”
Mobile internet usage has been constantly surging essentially everywhere, but in developed, steady PC markets like the US, UK or Europe in general, desktop traffic continues to lead the charts. Meanwhile, India, as well as Asia and Africa on the whole, are predictably spearheading the new mobile revolution of the digital world.
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Any miracles to report between July and September 2016, perhaps turning things around for a long-struggling global tablet industry? Certainly not according to preliminary IDC data, which counted only 43 million slates and detachables shipped in total during 2016’s third quarter, down a whopping 14.7 percent year-over-year.On the bright side (yes, there is one, for a change), sales were considerably on the rise
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Long-term, schmong-term. Despite the huge Galaxy Note 7 scandals and controversies, Samsung still managed to earn a good bit of money between July and September both overall and strictly from a mobile business standpoint, also totally dominating the global smartphone vendor ranks once again.Unless you own a pretty reliable crystal ball, ...
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Smartwatches showed so much promise and garnered a crazy amount of buzz back in the day, but not even Apple was able to keep the hype up for long in lack of clear use cases and compelling selling points.Now, granted, intelligent timepieces with attractive built-in features including GPS trackers and cellular radios that allow them to break free of connected smartphones are slowly starting to multiply at last. Then you have a number of fashion brands willing to diversify the industry and go after luxury-loving audiences, though it might already be too little, too late.At least as far as ...
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Apple never performs too well during the summer in the always competitive smartphone landscape, and with the iPhone 6s and 6s Plus so quickly out of steam, you may have expected to hear of a massive worldwide decline in iOS device popularity between June and August 2016.But the iPhone SE probably surpassed analyst forecasts, especially in markets like the UK, where it was actually the number one sold handheld overall in the aforementioned period, ...
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A number of research firms have come out with their Q2 or overall H1 2016 smartphone sales reports, unanimously concluding Android as a whole continued to surge, while iOS lost a bit of steam, and Windows plunged closer than ever to absolute market irrelevance.As far as OEMs go, Samsung enjoyed a couple of
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