“Given all the current success at tech stock Apple Inc, it’s easy to forget how much the company has actually grown over the past five years,” Anthony John Agnello writes for InvestorPlace. “Apple stock investors become desensitized to the ever-climbing share price, the torrent of inflating analyst expectations for both earnings and product sales.”
“Apple is not just booming but competitors are going bust. Thanks to ever increasing market share, Apple could be the world’s leading smartphone manufacturer in the world, in terms of how many it ships out to retailers, by the first quarter of 2012,” Agnello writes. “An IDC report last week noted 18.7 million iPhones were shipped worldwide during the first quarter of 2011, netting Apple an almost 19% share of the overall smartphone market. Not bad considering Apple only has the iPhone while Google has scores of handsets runnings its Android OS and Motorla (NYSE: MMI) has a dozen or so models on the market at any given time.”
Agnello writes, “Here are three companies in particular that are being slowly killed by the iPhone [RIM, Nokia, and Sony Ericsson]. These companies aren’t sunk yet, but they need to dramatically reinvent their smartphone business before Apple drowns them for good.”
Read more in the full article here.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “Fred Mertz” for the heads up.]
Naysayers? Anyone? Beauller?
I think the article omitted to mention a fourth company being killed in the mobile space by Apple: Google. If they keep giving away Android for free the development cost alone will swallow up a large chunk of earnings. They are the new Microsoft: stuffing billions down a black hole in the expectation that volume = profits. The faster that notion is sunk by Apple, the better.
BLN, actually Google is in a MUCH better position than MS. They are dumping money, but getting ad placement. Ad placement = ad revenue, Ad revenue = profit. You are ascribing the wrong business model to Google.
You are probably correct that the development, especially fragmented across multiple vendors and carriers may prove to be more expense than its worth to support.
Yes, but OEMs and wireless carriers could fork Android and replace Google ad placement, like Ophone in China.
At least he gets it. Why do we always hear about iPhone vs android. 1 product vs an OS. Fair. Why not model to model. Oh yea. That MDN word. Bloodbath
“Apple could be the world’s leading smartphone manufacturer in the world,”
From the Department of Redundancy Department
HTC has been making out pretty well, but only because they were quick to copy the iPhone (as much as is possible without iOS and the A4/A5 cpu) and offer it to all and sundry. Of course, the courts might stop that gravy train in its tracks. Time will tell. Meanwhile, Apple keeps on rolling!
iPhone. Killer.
Anyone who actually used the first iPhone and understood it, knew clear back then it would be a winner.
The abilities and features and ease of use of the original iPhone were enough back then to convince me Apple was going to take over the market with a near majority position with the rest being just “feature phones.”
Now, I truly wonder if Apple will not introduce an iPhoneMini which does phone stuff & apps and only email to limit the bandwidth and let telcos offer a less expensive monthly charge.
That will be the death of “feature phones”.
“… they need to dramatically reinvent their smartphone business before Apple drowns them for good.”
– how…? 🙂
Some people may resent Apple for wrecking the businesses of their so-called competitors. But these companies richly deserve what they’re getting. They did nothing but recycle the same old crap year after year rake until Apple showed the marketplace what real innovation looks like. If they can’t compete, then they’re in the wrong business!
Sony Ericsson should immediately sink.
Its customer service is lousy, almost criminal. They lost my cel phone at maintenance, promised me a new phone but never delivered. Two years of useless phone calls to them.
Sue them? I got more important things to do.
Apple is making most of the available profit in the mobile phone market. And doing it very efficiently, with basically two models (not counting differences case color and storage size), or three models if counting the iPhone 3GS that is still being sold.
As I’ve said before, that means Apple’s competition, at some point, will no longer be able to afford to compete with Apple. They will “go broke” trying.