“In the United States the top of the market belongs to Apple,” Dan Rowinski reports for ReadWrite Mobile. “The big three U.S. cellular carriers – Verizon, AT&T and Sprint – have all posted their most recent quarterly earnings and between them 58% of smartphones sold were iPhones.”
“Sprint was the last of the big three to announce earnings. The nation’s third largest cellular carrier sold 1.5 million iPhones and another million “LTE” smartphones. Add that to Verizon’s 3.1 million iPhones (of 6.8 million smartphones in the quarter) and AT&T’s 4.7 million iPhones (out of 6.7 million) and all told, 9.3 million out of 16 million (58.1%) went to Apple’s flagship device,” Rowinski reports. “The numbers are similar to what we saw in Q2 this year, though the volume of smartphones sold was higher for AT&T and Verizon in Q3.”
Rowinski reports, “Most of the iPhones sold in Q3 were not Apple’s latest iPhone 5. The newest flagship device was released about 10 days before the end of the quarter and accounted only for 21% of Verizon’s iPhone sales. Look for a mammoth fourth quarter for both the big three carriers and for Apple as the holiday sales season rolls along and the iPhone 5 picks up steam. ”
Read more in the full article here.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “Dan K.” for the heads up.]
Being top still isn’t good enough for the markets. The iPad mini is criticized for being too pricey and yet also for having too small of margins.
And just how do the analysts know what Apple’s margins are on the iPad mini? They don’t. Pure speculation.
Android’s 15 minutes are over.
Samsung allegedly ‘shipped’ twice as many in the same quarter as Apple’s. Me thinks, Indian middle class is reluctantly/enthusiastically Samsung’s bitch. It’s Apple’s fault for ignoring them.
Just because a device is shipped, or even sold, doesn’t mean it made any money. In Asia, Latin America and Africa there are a ton of “Android” devices which are super cheap but really aren’t a smartphone as Google intended Android devices to be. Apple doesn’t want any part of that market, because it’s simply not profitable (for Apple, anyway, because Apple won’t make that kind of low-level device).
And there is the story, “The newest flagship device was released about 10 days before the end of the quarter” is the screaming clue to the real percentage this quarter.
Samsung maybe it is time to use RIMM’s solution to this problem. It is time for the “Buy one get one FREE!” sales pitch. Keep you market share up. Maybe, Buy one and take one for everyone you know. Yeah, that will keep your market share up.
Yup, and how many people held off buying a new iPhone because they were waiting for the 5? Millions.
Okay, let’s look at these numbers from Verizon for just a second. The iPhone 5 was available for 10 days of the quarter. That’s about 1/9th of the quarter. In that time, sales of the iPhone 5 accounted “only for 21% of Verizon’s iPhone sales”. All other things being equal, it should have accounted for 11% of sales. Instead it counted for “only” twice that. What do these people think the word “only” means?