The holiday quarter saw iPhone sales grow for first time after four successive quarters of decline, according to the latest Gartner estimates.
We knew the holiday quarter was a good one for Apple thanks to record earnings of $91.8B. CEO Tim Cook also indicated that the iPhone 11 played a big role in this success story …
Quarter three saw iPhone sales decline steeply, says Gartner, despite the successful launch of the iPhone 11 models.
We’ve already seen Canalys, Strategy Analytics, and IHS all agree that iPhone sales fell year-on-year, with Apple implicitly admitting as such, but Gartner says things were even worse than the picture so far presented…
Global smartphone sales increased 1.4 percent YoY as compared to Q3 2017, according to a new report published by Gartner. The report details Apple retaining its 11.8 percent share of the smartphone market, with Samsung losing 3.4 percent compared to the same period last year.
Gartner predicted last month that global smartphone sales would return to growth next year, and its latest numbers show that this was actually achieved sooner than expected, in Q3 this year.
Global sales of smartphones to end users totalled 383 million units in the third quarter of 2017, a 3 percent increase over the same period in 2016, according to Gartner, Inc. All of the top five smartphone vendors achieved double-digit growth apart from Apple …
Gartner is forecasting that worldwide smartphone sales will return to growth in 2018, with the iPhone X a key factor in the U.S., China and Europe.
Mobile phone sales are expected to return to year-over-year growth in 2018, with shipments totaling 1.9 billion units. Smartphones will represent 86 percent of total mobile phone shipments in 2018, up 6 percent from 2017.
We expect Apple’s iPhone X to be the sales driver in North America, China and Western Europe, despite its high price. “Given the late November availability of the iPhone X, we expect the iPhone’s replacement cycle to flow more strongly into 2018,” said Roberta Cozza, research director at Gartner …
The latest Gartner data (below) shows that both Apple and Samsung lost market share in the first quarter of the year as Chinese brands continued to increase their sales.
iPhone sales actually grew very marginally year-on-year, but the market as a whole grew 9% in the same period, resulting in the decrease in market share. Apple saw its global share fall from 14.8% to 13.7%, but market leader Samsung was hit harder …
Apple’s falling sales coupled to strong growth from emerging Chinese brands saw the iPhone’s worldwide market share drop just over three points from 17.9% in the first quarter of 2015 to 14.8% in the same quarter this year, according to Gartner.
Although a saturated smartphone market is part of the challenge faced by Apple, global smartphone sales did continue to grow, by 3.9% to 349M units.
Market leader Samsung also saw its share fall in the same period …
While research firms IDC and Gartner disagree on whether Mac sales are falling or rising, they do agree on two things: Q3 Mac sales were at their most sluggish for two years, but still well ahead of the rest of the PC industry.
Ahead of new retina 4K iMac and likley accessories launch next week, IDC estimated that Apple sold 5.3M Macs in Q3 2015, a year-on-year fall of 3.4%. Gartner instead estimated 5.6M sales, representing a 1.5% increase. Both firms did, however, agree on two pieces of good news for Apple …
Expand
Expanding
Close
Gartner today published its third quarter numbers, showing overall growth in the smartphone market and a strong quarter for Apple. Mobile devices overall saw as many as 456 million sold with smartphones taking a 301 million slice of that pie, which comes out to a solid 66% (up 20% from last year). This shift in the market seems to be hurting Samsung and Nokia the most, because while the Korean giant is still leading the pack, this year smaller companies with slimmer margins seem to be taking some of its foothold.
We’ve already seen a number of renders showing Apple’s ambitious Campus 2 project as well as the progress in Cupertino, California at the site of the future spaceship-like building. Now photos shared today by German site ifun.de depict an early shot of architectural samples with the design slated for Apple Campus 2.
Expand
Expanding
Close
PC shipment estimates for the first quarter of 2014 are out from both IDC and Gartner, and as usual the two companies disagree. IDC shows Apple falling to 4th place in the U.S., behind Lenovo, while Gartner has the company remaining in 3rd place just ahead of Lenovo.
Both agree, however, that Apple’s U.S. market share has fallen somewhat year-on-year, IDC showing a drop from 11 to 10.3 percent, while Gartner’s numbers show a decline from 11.5 to 10.8 percent. The differences are relatively small, however, with both sets of numbers show that around 1.5 million Macs were sold in the first quarter of the year.
Apple’s share of the global PC market has mostly climbed year-on-year over the past decade.
Figures released today by Gartner show that the iPad remained the best-selling tablet of 2013, selling more than the combined sales of the four runners-up.
Apple’s strong fourth quarter helped it to maintain the top position in the market in 2013 […]
Apple’s tablets remain strong in the higher end of the market and, Apple’s approach will continue to force vendors to compete with full ecosystem offerings, even in the smaller-screen market as the iPad mini sees a greater share …
Expand
Expanding
Close
If developers are finding it difficult to make money from apps today, things are only going to get tougher, according to a forecast by Gartner (via TechCrunch). Looking at the period through to 2018, Gartner predicts that fewer than one in 10,000 apps will be considered financially successful by their developers.
“The vast number of mobile apps may imply that mobile is a new revenue stream that will bring riches to many,” said Ken Dulaney, vice president and distinguished analyst at Gartner. “However, our analysis shows that most mobile applications are not generating profits.”
While this may not necessarily be a bad thing for major brands, who Gartner note may use apps to build brand recognition and product awareness, small developers have a much harder time getting their apps noticed, as consumers increasingly turn to recommendations and advertising to make their selections.
Gartner predicts that by 2017, 94.5 percent of apps will be free or freemium, suggesting that advertising and in-app purchases will become an increasingly important source of income. The company also expects browser-based apps to grow in popularity as the HTML5 standard matures.
US Mac sales fell year-on-year as part of the global decline in the PC market as consumers switch to tablets, phablets and smartphones – but the two major market analysts produced wildly differing estimates of the size of that fall.
IDC has a dramatic drop of 11.2 percent, from 2.14M in the third quarter of 2012 to 1.9M in the same quarter this year, while Gartner shows a much more modest decline of 2.3 percent from 2.2M (close to IDC’s number) to 2.1M. The only point on which both agree is this is the first Q3 decline in Mac sales since 2002, a quarter usually assisted by the back-to-school market …
Image: digitaltrends.com
In the circles most of us hang out, it might seem incredible that featurephones – aka dumb phones – were still outselling smartphones until recently, but that was indeed the case right up to the first quarter of this year. The latest Gartner figures show that smartphones finally broke ahead in Q2, achieving 51.8 percent of worldwide phone sales.
Smartphones accounted for 51.8 percent of mobile phone sales in the second quarter of 2013, resulting in smartphone sales surpassing feature phone sales for the first time,” said Anshul Gupta, principal research analyst at Gartner. Asia/Pacific, Latin America and Eastern Europe exhibited the highest smartphone growth rates of 74.1 percent, 55.7 percent and 31.6 percent respectively, as smartphone sales grew in all regions.
The news wasn’t quite so good for Apple, with its year-on-year marketshare dropping more than four points to 14.2 percent.
This does, however, reflect a period in which market leader Samsung launched a flurry of new handsets. Apple’s position is likely to improve substantially when the iPhone 5S and iPhone 5C are launched, likely next month.
Via TechCrunch
Gartner is today out with a report detailing its estimates for Q2 2013 global and U.S. PC shipments. Globally, the industry average for shipments is down 10.9%. This is the fifth consecutive decline for this specific metric.
“We are seeing the PC market reduction directly tied to the shrinking installed base of PCs, as inexpensive tablets displace the low-end machines used primarily for consumption in mature and developed markets,” said Mikako Kitagawa, principal analyst at Gartner. “In emerging markets, inexpensive tablets have become the first computing device for many people, who at best are deferring the purchase of a PC. This is also accounting for the collapse of the mini notebook market.”
A forecast published today by market intelligence company Gartner suggests that Apple’s combined market share of mobile phones, tablets and PCs will grow from just under 10 percent to over 14 percent by 2014 – shipping almost 3m devices this year, and rising to over 3.5m next year.
Gartner is predicting that while PC sales will fall 10.6 percent year-on-year, and phones grow at a modest 4.3 percent, tablets will grow 67.9 percent …
Expand
Expanding
Close
Worldwide Mobile Device Sales to End Users by Operating System in 3Q12
Gartner is out with its quarterly report for worldwide mobile device sales by vendor and OS for the third quarter. While reporting an overall 3 percent decline in mobile phone sales, the smartphone category hit 169.2 million units in Q3, a 47 percent increase from the year-ago quarter. While Apple is still third to Samsung and Nokia for total mobile device sales, Samsung and Apple remain the top smartphone vendors collectively, capturing 46.5-percent of the market. Meanwhile, Nokia slipped from No. 3 smartphone vendor in Q2 to No. 7 in Q3. This made room for RIM and HTC behind Apple and Samsung in the third and fourth positions.
With sales of 23.6 million units in the third quarter for Apple (up 36.2-percent year-on-year), Gartner reported Samsung widened its lead on Apple with almost 55 million smartphones in the quarter and strong demand for its Galaxy line. Samsung once again takes the top vendor position for smartphones with 32.5-percent of the market:
Samsung’s mobile phones sales continued to accelerate, totaling almost 98 million units in the third quarter of 2012 (see Table 1), up 18.6 percent year-on-year. Samsung saw strong demand for Galaxy smartphones across different price points, and it further widened the gap with Apple in the smartphone market, selling 55 million smartphones in the third quarter of 2012. It commanded 32.5 percent of the global smartphone market in the third quarter of 2012.
As for the race between Android and iOS, Gartner’s numbers show Android increased its marketshare nearly 20 percentage points in the quarter to 72.4-percent of the market, up from just 52.5-percent in the year-ago quarter. In comparison, Apple now accounts for 13.9-percent of the market, down from 15 percent last year, but Gartner expects that to change in Q4 thanks to the continuing iPhone 5 roll out:
Expand
Expanding
Close
Both IDC and Gartner are out with their reports for PC shipments in the third quarter today. While Apple is not in the top five vendors for worldwide shipments, estimates from the two firms place Apple’s share of the United States market at 12.5-percent to 13.6-percent.
According to IDC’s numbers (above), Apple captured 12.5-percent of U.S. PC shipments in the third quarter. This is up from 11.8-percent in the same quarter last year. Apple faced a year-over-year unit decline of 7 percent, but market leaders HP and Dell posted shipment declines of 18.8-percent and 16 percent, respectively. Meanwhile, shipments for the U.S. market in total were down 12.4-percent.
In comparison, the same numbers from Gartner have the total market decline at 13.8-percent. Apple hit 13.6-percent of the U.S. market, where as it had a 12.5-percent estimate for Q3 2011. Estimates from both firms put Apple’s market position firmly behind HP and Dell, despite IDC estimating fourth-place Lenovo’s growth at over 9 percent for the quarter:
Four of the top 5 vendors in the U.S. market experienced shipment declines. HP maintained the No. 1 position in the U.S. market despite a shipment decline of 19.3 percent (see Table 2). Lenovo was the only vendor among the top 5 to increase shipments. Both Acer and Toshiba shipments declined significantly due to the tough environment in the consumer market. Apple expected to have a PC shipment decline due to softness in the public market, but the company faced a slowdown in the consumer market.
We are starting to see the “Cars and Trucks” model unfold as PC sales are starting to slip dramatically.
Among the top 5 vendors in the U.S. PC market, all but Apple experienced a decline in shipments according to a Gartner report late this evening. This is not your average “Apple beat the PC industry every quarter for the past 5 years.” It is a dramatic fall. Apple pulled to within 500,000 units of Dell from double that a year ago.
A few notables:
Expand
Expanding
Close
Research firm Gartner released its numbers today for “Worldwide Mobile Device Sales” during Q1 2012. There are not many surprises in the report when it comes to Apple, but Gartner estimated Samsung sold 38 smartphones during the quarter, which is less than the 42.2 million estimated by IDC earlier this month and more than the 32 million by IHS iSuppli. With Apple confirming 35.1 million iPhones sold during the quarter, Gartner’s numbers put Samsung as the both the No. 1 smartphone and overall mobile device vendor. The report also noted Samsung and Apple together accounted for 49.3-percent of the global smartphone sales, which is up from just 29.3 percent in Q1 of last year:
“The continued roll-out of third generation (3G)-based smartphones by local and regional manufacturers such as Huawei, ZTE, Lenovo, Yulong and TCL Communication should help spur demand in China. In addition, the arrival of new products in mature markets based on new versions of the Android and Windows Phone operating systems (OSs), and the launch of the Apple iPhone 5 will help drive a stronger second half in Western Europe and North America. However, as we are starting to update our market forecast we feel a downward adjustment to our 2012 figures, in the range of 20 million units, is unavoidable.”
On the platform side, Gartner’s report estimated both Android and iOS accounted for 79 percent of global smartphone sales—up from just 53.3-percent in Q1 2011. Of that 80 percent, Android grabbed 56.1-percent, which is slightly higher than the 51 percent of the United States market, according to estimates from comScore earlier this month. Apple took in the remaining 22.9-percent, which is less than the 30.7-percent comScore estimated for the U.S. market:
Gartner analysts said the smartphone market has become highly commoditized and differentiation is becoming a challenge for manufacturers. “At the high end, hardware features coupled with applications and services are helping differentiation, but this is restricted to major players with intellectual property assets. However, in the mid to low-end segment, price is increasingly becoming the sole differentiator. This will only worsen with the entry of new players and the dominance of Chinese manufacturers, leading to increased competition, low profitability and scattered market share.”
Bloomberg quotes a Gartner analyst:
“I don’t expect Apple to replace Samsung any time soon,” Gartner analyst Sandy Shen said in an interview. “China Telecom [story] is the nation’s smallest carrier, so the extent to which they can help Apple is quite limited.”
The 16.8 percentage-point gap in China between Cupertino, California-based Apple and Samsung almost doubled from the third quarter. While Samsung is No. 1 and Apple No. 5 in China, the global story is different: Worldwide, Apple passed its Suwon, South Korea-based competitor to become the biggest smartphone vendor in the fourth quarter, according to Gartner.
When you consider that the iPhone is not yet made for China’s dominant carrier, which holds two-thirds of a BILLION customers, the news that Samsung is gaining market share on Apple is not surprising (15 million iPhones ride on incompatible China Mobile).
I will be surprised, however, if Apple does not close the gap next year. The sixth-generation iPhone will almost certainly work on China Mobile’s network.
Expand
Expanding
Close
Research firm Gartner just released its estimates for PC shipments in the Western Europe region during the holiday quarter, and only Apple and Asus made any meaningful progress, with Apple recording the strongest gains in France and the United Kingdom.
While the Mac maker remained absent from the Top 5 rankings in Western Europe and Germany, it was a sole first-tier PC brand to grow sales in the United Kingdom during the holiday quarter. Specifically, Apple’s Mac business in the country grew 17.2 percent, enough to rank fourth with a 9.1 percent market share.
Everyone else’s business shrunk: Hewlett-Packard (No. 1) was down 27 percent, Dell (No. 4) declined by a whopping 32.2-percent, Toshiba (No. 3) fell 5.4-percent and Acer (No. 5) was by far the biggest loser with a 62.4-percent year-over-year decline. The same story is in France where Apple placed No. 5 by growing 15.3-percent for an 8.2-percent market share. Only Asus (No. 2) grew slightly faster than Apple at 17.4-percent, while shipments of PC desktops and notebooks from HP, Acer, and Dell plummeted.
If you include the iPad, Apple easily beats its rivals to the PC punch across the board.
More notes and charts are after the break.
Shipments of notebook and desktop PCs in the United Kingdom. Source: Gartner, February 2012
With the growing sales of Apple’s mobile devices and the ever-increasing popularity of smartphones (analysts projected 30+ million iPhones for today’s holiday quarter earnings call), it is no surprise that the Mac-maker is rising up the chip-purchasing ladder. According to research firm Gartner, Apple is now the world’s largest buyer of silicon parts, spending an astounding $17 billion on semiconductors in 2011 and accounting for a 5.7 percent share of total silicon buying.
That’s a 34.6 percent increase over 2010— enough to jump two spots ahead of rivals Samsung and the world’s leading computer maker Hewlett-Packard (soon to be displaced by Apple). Apple’s rise stems of strong sales of iPads, iPhones and its popular MacBook Air ultra-portable notebook family. Samsung ranked second with $16.7 billion worth of semiconductors in 2011, a 5.5 percent share. Computer makers Hewlett-Packard and Dell and cell phone giant Nokia round up the list of top five chip buyers with $16.7 billion, $9.8 billion and $9 billion worth of silicon parts, respectively.
