“The suffocating grip of Samsung Electronics Co. and Apple Inc. on the smartphone industry is being felt across Asia as a growing number of companies quit the business or rack up hefty losses,” Daisuke Wakabayashi and Mayumi Negishi report for The Wall Street Journal.
“In the widening gap between the smartphone industry’s have and have-nots, Japan’s mobile phone manufacturers stand out for its struggles because the country’s phones were revered for being smart before smartphones emerged. During the feature-phone era, Japan’s mobile phone makers developed technological marvels that allowed users to watch TV, pay for items electronically and other features that are now commonplace with smartphones,” Wakabayashi and Negishi report. “Confident in the technical capability of their phones, Japanese firms were late to spot the smartphone shift and were forced to scramble with me-too products that looked stale next to Apple Inc.’s iPhone… ‘Apple has established its brand. Japanese smartphone makers came in too late. Probably out of 10 friends, only one will have a phone that is not iPhone,’ said Nobuaki Toma, a 30-year-old who is considering upgrading his iPhone 4 to an iPhone 5.”
Wakabayashi and Negishi report, “Apple and Samsung account for roughly half of all smartphones sold, but they share nearly all of the industry’s profits. Research firm Strategy Analytics said Samsung and Apple generated $5.2 billion and $4.6 billion, respectively, in handset profits in the second quarter.”
MacDailyNews Take: Try to keep up WSJ, that Strategy Analytics has been thoroughly debunked. See: No, Samsung has not dethroned Apple in mobile profits – July 28, 2013
Wakabayashi and Negishi report, “By comparison, current No. 3 LG Electronics Inc.’s mobile division posted a $54 million operating profit with a 5.3% share in the latest quarter… Also on Wednesday, Panasonic said losses deepened at its mobile business. In the three months to June, Panasonic said its mobile arm lost ¥5.4 billion versus a ¥3.7 billion loss in the year-ago period. Sales also fell 14%.”
Read more in the full article here.
Related articles:
Japan’s DoCoMo paying heavily for not carrying Apple iPhone – July 5, 2013
How Apple’s iPhone conquered Japan – May 6, 2013
Ok. Sure.
On the fast train in Japan, every single Japanese were chit-chatting with iPhones, I seldom saw any other smartphones.
The same goes for the underground in London, every time I go on I count those phones and tablets I can see and invariably it’s 90% or so Apple with smatterings of other stuff. This is not to say that other people don’t have other devices and just aren’t using them, but that perhaps says something in itself if people aren’t bothering to use them.
I thought Apple wasn’t interested in market share and was quite content selling one iPhone costing a million dollars each because it’s so good people are willing to pay any price for it.*
*Story according to the fanboys.
Apple fans aren’t one monolithic group. I think both profits and marketshare are important.
You need profit to continue to research and design new amazin products to increase marketshare.
You need marketshare to entice developers into your ecosystem which attract more customers which help increase profits.
I see them as complimentary to one another.
Apple doesn’t have the cultural mindset of building an iPhone or any product for marketshare first and foremost on their list. Apple builds what Apple would want to use and then puts on the market for the rest of us to buy, use and enjoy. That is where, if any, Apple’s marketshare comes in.
What is the auto marketshare of Rolls Royce. Do they build for marketshare or do they build a product they want to drive?
You need enough market share to remain relevant. Macs had tiny market share for years and survived because they had enough to justify people buying them and developing software, they were perhaps close to the low end, but still enough.
Obviously increased market share is going to increase revenue, and potentially profit share, but the latter is only true if your increased market share comes from equally profitable customers. There are a lot of customers who to an extent just aren’t worth having.
To an extent a large market share works as its own advertising, but it can also work against you if your products don’t stay good.
Profit share is what you want, if you can get market share as well then fair enough.
wrong headline should be Samsung,Apple crush Asian smartphone rivals.
Wrong.
Many people want to see Apple fail. I don’t know why, but it’s obvious, and news agencies sensationalize stories to get hits. Even debunked mis-truths/lies never get corrected and gets repeated.
Because Apple is an arrogant,bully company,with a legion of Apple fanatics.
Are they any more arrogant that Microsoft was during their heyday? No one was a bigger bully than Microsoft was!!! And how does Apple having legions of fans bothers you?
Even during the bad years and when Apple was on the brink of extinction, many people wanted to see Apple fail. Us Apple users took years abuse from Windows using morons. Now, things are turning around and it doesn’t feel so good, does it?
At what grade level did you cease learning basic English GMU lessons, “failsberto”? It’s never wise to make your reader do ALL the work trying to understand your point.
Little chance that Samsung will pick up business in Japan as Japanese phone makers get out of the business in view of the Japanese attitutde toward thier former colocy -Korea.