“The great smartphone boom is about to end. That’s according to one savvy tech prognosticator, Bill Whyman, head of the investment research firm International Strategy & Investment‘s tech strategy research team, who tends to look more than a couple quarters ahead,” Robert Hof reports for Forbes.
“Whyman contends that as smartphone penetration reaches 50% sometime next year, the market will start to slow for the first time,” Hof reports. “That will put pressure on all the players, from struggling RIM to to Google‘s newly acquired Motorola and even to so-not-struggling Apple.”
Assuming Whyman’s right, here’s what he thinks happens next:
• Growth slows
• Competition intensifies
• Content and services will be where growth and market value happens
• Wireless carriers try to capture more mobile revenues
• Open systems will start to win because:
1) Consumers become more willing to manage complexity/want choice
2) performance advantage from end-to-end vendor narrows
3) scale and standards of open ecosystem drive lower cost
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Just like it happened in the Portable Media Player (iPod) market, right Billy?
Oops.
For his fifth bullet point, Whyman has been iCal’ed for future use.
so China is already at 50% smartphones?
Well, The last quarter’s numbers haven’t come through yet, so…
Perhaps he is predicting (most likely correctly) that Romney will win in November which can only lead to one thing… The smartphone market will promptly shrink to a couple thousand of the wealthiest people and everyone else will be too fucking broke to afford even cans and strings, let alone mobile phone service without data.
don’t worry when mitt gets rid of all those pesky little brown illegals you will have lots of opportunity to pay your student loan off gardening on mitt’s estates
Of course, Apple will continue to innovate and the competition will continue to be years behind…
I call BS…
EXACTLY. The future is for the innovators, IOW Apple. The iPhone keeps getting better. Old iPhones keep being replaced with new iPhones. Every other company is either bumbling or crumbling. So what in that scenario = a market peak?
Nothing. 😯
As usual, analysts (or whatever) can only think of the little world they live in. There’s a big world out there. This guy is clueless.
I have purchased every iPhone new. I will purchase an iPhone 5 on day 1 and then pass on my old iPhone 4S to my wife and so on and so on throughout the family.
Who’s using the original iPhone?
In my house it’s my youngest daughter. Although the phone is not connected to any cellular network (she’s too young). My eldest has my iPhone 3Gs and my wife has her own 3GS. When the “5 comes, she’ll get one of those and her 3GS goes to my boy. I’ve got a 4S.
See? Some people actually do pass their phones down, and they all still work just fine, thanks.
Here is a complete idiot who has not even noticed the fragmentation of the “open” systems, the vastly increased developement and maintenance costs they incur, and many other factors which can readily be seen by even casual observers. iCal this one for future well deserved ridicule. If we were truly near the peak as he believes the success for open systems would not be the receding apparition that it is.
Saw this in the Loop:
“Poll: Galaxy S III helps Samsung increase lead over Apple”
“Poll?” Tell me it isn’t true. Tired of reading these Samsung-salivating stories…
Fruit loops over there.
Look it’s simple. Android is a rip off copy of the iPhone (and before the iPhone it was ripped off RIM BB).
1 its clunkier
2 less integrated an elegant
3 worse build quality and cheaper plastic construction for same end cost
4 larger screens that are lower res and ugly.
5 made by overseas companies
6 not upgradable
7 mostly not even running the current android OS at release
8 high marketshare low use
9 riddled with pirated software and viruses
10 has a few extra poorly designed and implemented features that do not work well
I could go on. Android has not allowed a single new phone manufacturer to enter the market, it has only allowed phone assemblers to compete with Apple, but only Samsung is having any success and only because they manufacture nearly every component internally and they rip off Apple designs.
Android is full of IP theft that is still going through the process of litigation. It might not even exist as a platform in a few years, and what’s there now is a patchwork of poorly designed incompatable sub platforms that mostly used as glorified feature phones with GPS and more room to text.
The iPhone will continue to grow for years and in mature markets, Android will see a precipitous drop off a cliff.
The smartphone will only decline if and when Apple introduces an unforeseen device that will replace it.
Nice title, article totally wrong though. I believe we may be nearing a transformation point for the iPhone, just like the iPod transformed into the iPhone. I think the iPhone will eventually become something much more than what it is today, perhaps it will be called an IPad Nano. Once market penetration is complete, it is probably inevitable that Apple will head to higher, more premium ground for a new breakthrough product, while still developing the other product lines. So yeah this will happen, but Apple is probably already getting ready for this.
Just more FUD before earnings. Get ready, more coming…
SOS: Same Old Shi…
…herd the sheeple, gut them for money, bleed the suckers dry.
That’s right, after the 5th Ford Model there was no need to innovate cars because they were as fast and as sleek as they needed to be and everyone who was going to have one had one already. Glad we stopped there. Waste of time this innovation thing. Now put those wagons in a circle and let’s
Chow down!!!
And of course everybody enjoys managing complexity, so we all drive Italian sports cars and repair/tune them ourselves. Eh wot?
Yeah, China, and of course Brazil and the rest of Latin America…
The smartphone market is one where the smartphones are smarter than the pundits that prognosticate. 🙂
How savvy you are! 😉
No wonder Apple will call it the New iPhone and not the iPhone 5! 😉
“Open systems will start to win because:
1) Consumers become more willing to manage complexity/want choice”
Yehhh! Absolutely! Like they have SO enormously demonstrated on the desktop with their overwhelming preference for Linux.
Well, I won’t be looking to Whyman’s firm for my investment advice.
The market won’t peak. Apple will continue to release smartphone after smartphone.
Bill Whyman… just shut the F*** up… You are just like the rest of the analysts…
The boom is about to end… so what… we are not here to support the mobile boom.
Ignore all anal-lyst. They are nothing more than a bunch of market manipulators. They don’t know anything else and they don’t know any more than the average Joe.
“… according to one savvy tech prognosticator, Bill Whyman …”
Savvy my ass! This guy’s a dipshit.
I’m starting to wonder if all these “tech” analysts are all just bean counters…
Small minded article. No eyes open to what comes after the smart phone. Typical of minds that didn’t see the iPhone coming and though RIM and Nokia would dominate the world forever.
Apple is probably working already on what comes after the smart phone. Because there will be an ‘after’ the smart phone……
Somebody is either desperate for page hits or only has the 2 of spades remaining in his deck of cards. Either way he needs to be fired for making such a ridiculous post.
Billy, I’ll have what you are smoking.
China is just opening up, Android is faltering. Go into any of th Android forums, you see many Fandroids defecting to th iPhone that re fed up with being stuck on an OS that is 2 years old.
(Consumers become more willing to manage complexity/want choice)
Look what happened to MS Windows complexity. Users end up with a simple Mac OS
I was found this point to be incredibly ignorant.
Somehow market penetrance creates a new desire for non-tech people to become tech people? The what-what you say?!?!
My other major problem with this article is the misunderstanding of incidence and prevalence. Smartphones may be approaching their highest markethshare, but that does not mean that total sales could not increase for years (as many have noted about the markets in China, Brazil, etc)
this guy puts the anal in analyst
thats what i want complexity and support for cheap hardware where the margin is so slim they can’t even afford indian tech support
While reading this my nexus just updated to jelly bean and as much as 80% of you will hate to hear this it stomps on ios. Instead of bashing each system you should look at the strides on both side and be happy they are moving forward thanks to competition. And if you have a hard time swallowing this, wear a disguise and check the upcoming jb os its gonna make you eat humble pie….
My sister has jellybean and it is a shadow of iOS. You are just taking the Pi$$.
Yes, the smartphone market will eventually reach saturation point, and yes, iPhone users may start to upgrade less often if future models don’t keep including killer features. But Apple will still have the lion’s share of profits.
Then there’s the small matter of the iPad market supplanting the PC market …