Just wondering
What are the projections for when just about everybody in the world will have a featurephone or a smartphone?
The closing months of 2013 saw Android gain ground on rivals in much of Europe and the US, as iOS and Windows Phone saw mixed results in the global market. Research firm Kantar Worldpanel reported that Android grew its market share in key countries in Europe, as well as the US and China, in 2012. Amongst the 'EU5' group of …
The issue is phones are now smartphones - where someone would have bought a simple candy bar style phone a few years ago they buy a smartphone (even if not for smart features).
So the smartphone market has rocketed and of course much of the growth is at the cheap / low end (no profit) of the market - where Apple does not play.
Suspect if you consider the market for mobiles phones (all types) to be 1000 phones per year - it will have increased but the split between smart and simple phones will have shifted significantly towards smart phones. So Apple sell more and more iPhones (beating previous records) but clearly much of the smartphone growth is not in areas they service.
The US market is dominated by carriers who link expensive phones with expensive contracts and don't offer much in fairly priced alternatives. Unless ATT and Verizon attempt some real competition or regulatory authorities intervene, its likely a slow move to the more competitive market we have in Europe.
Difficult to get a clear view of what is happening with so many different time scales quoted. The Windows phone is since 2011, Android I think is since 2012 and with no dates shown I'm left to assume all Apple figures are for just 2013? For Blackberry's sake I hope that decline is over a couple of years else they might not even figure on next years report.
Considering how clearly irrelevant and unused they are. Why, it's almost as if Microsoft know they have a crap product but think they can market it down everyones throat just by spending money on ads and paid shills, rather than spending it on improving quality.
Oh, wait...
You're not a politician by any chance?
Nah, he's just a bit of a troll.
Although I've not seen him banging on about Windows Phone for a while. Perhaps he was worried when the sales and market-share started going up? They seem to have hit a bit of a peak recently, with the new super-cheap Androids sending it zooming up again. Perhaps that's persuaded him out of his bunker...
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Cut out the great value for money Lumia 520 and see how many others sold.....
Its simply because they are so cheap for what you get that people are buying them, its the same for the Nexus 4 and 5, not the best phone out there but most buy it because its a lot of phone for the price when compared with others.
Microsoft have a big problem, they can't sale without cutting the price and that will make them a budget phone maker. Lose Lose either way.
'... the fact that 99% of its "mobile revenue" '
Do you have an authoritative citation for this assertion?
I suspect you meant to refer to profitability rather than revenue, as patent and licensing revenues have fairly low ongoing costs, while selling HW & SW does require some heft expenditures.
Dear El Reg: I wonder if there is any mileage in listing ups n downs of savage fortunes on a country by country basis?
Speculative intuition hints developing countries of the up n up with emerging middle class wage slaves and increasingly more peeps with disposable income might favour Apple side of things while nations experiencing economic economy nose dives might favout another flavour.
(Jus' thinkin' really)
Nokia reports dismal sales which is why it dumped the handset business.
Kantar on the other hand, reports "stable" market share for Windows phone with numbers, at least in Germany, that do not in any way reflect casual observations - such observations are about as valid as Kantar's survey-based numbers.
The weird thing is that comTech, the parent company of Kantar, has access to pretty reasonable browser stats. Wonder when Mr Sunnebo is going to have to get a new job.