“According to a survey by Strategy Analytics out today, Apple and Samsung tied in smartphone unit shipments in calendar Q4 at 74.5 million,” Mark Hibben writes for Seeking Alpha. “But while Samsung managed to ship the same number of units as Apple, Apple clobbered Samsung on profits. Apple’s greater profitability will allow it to pull ahead of Samsung in unit sales in the coming year. Samsung has already lost the race for smartphone market leadership.”
“Strategy Analytics’ results are only the first of a number of surveys that will come out as earnings season winds down, and the exact number of unit shipments for Samsung may vary from survey to survey. It doesn’t really matter,” Hibben writes. “The important part of the competition is already over, as demonstrated by Samsung’s earnings report.”
“Apple’s greater profitability affords it the capital needed to fuel investment in infrastructure, services, manufacturing and product development that will only serve to increase Apple’s competitive advantage over Samsung in the year ahead,” Hibben writes. “Apple’s smartphone ecosystem is now on a virtuous spiral in which increasing sales only enhance the appeal of the ecosystem, leading to more sales.”
“Rumors that Samsung has captured 75% of the next generation of Apple SOCs, to be fabricated using the new FinFET process, tends to confirm my working assumptions about the continuing Apple/Samsung collaboration at Samsung’s Austin Texas fab. I believe Apple helped fund capex at Austin, and in return Apple will get preferential treatment for the initial production ramp,” Hibben writes. “These next SOCs will make Apple devices even more superior, with better performance combined with improved battery life. Samsung, having been forced to cede the process advantage to its best foundry customer, might have to settle for fabricating Exynos 7 on its older and inferior 20 nm process in 2015, as indicated by the Exynos 7 marketing page. In the process, Samsung will only fall further behind Apple.”
Read more in the full article here.
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That ‘escalated’ quickly. Samsung’s only possible competitive edge to hold market share is with price, further undermining any remaining profitability.
Samsung needs to start making wind up alarm clocks. They can be a leader in that market.
They’ve certainly got the cuckoo part down.
BBUT! @ DamSung we have bigger screens!!!!! Oh that’s RIGHT… Not anymore. Copy this .!.. Willful IP infringers.
Samsung should have had a larger folding screen or some significant other advantage ready to ship when Apple shipped the larger iPhone’s.
Standing still isn’t going to get Samsung anywhere. Did they think it would? Apparently.
This one area where people keep underestimating Apple. It doesn’t pre-announce technology so lots of people judge its future only by the last phone it shipped despite all the evidence that Apple never stays still.
Samsun SHIPPED as many smartphones as Apple SOLD this last quarter. I’d guess some number of those shipments were not sold, giving Apple the sales crown for the quarter.
I like the idea that cutting edge processors manufactured by Samsung for Apple also means they’ll have fewer capacity for their own smart phones, having to reserve 14 nm production for Apple in 2015, putting Samsung further behind in smartphones.
Samsung will be too busy manufacturing parts for Apple’s smart phones that are actually popular, sell and make money. And of course Apple has all the R&D money it could possibly need to stay ahead.
Well, unless Samsung announces it’s exit from smartphone business, the competition is not over.
Unless the competition is for profits, in which case Samsung is on track to lose soon by being marginally/not profitable in their smartphone division. Along with most other Android makers.
even before this quarter Apple was already taking over 80% of the world’s smartphone profits.
So the competition was effectively over already.
article Feb 2014
“According to a research note by Raymond James analyst Tavis McCourt cited by Patrick Seitz of Investors.com, Apple’s 87.4 percent share of the industry’s profits dwarfed the earnings of second place Samsung, which accounted for 32.2 percent.”
(the numbers add up to more than 100% as other phone companies were losing money)
The latest numbers are just market share, Apple would have increased it’s profit dominance, so Apple is just cementing it’s victory.
btw in 2013 Samsung spent 13 billion in advertising, Apple ONE billion plus….
with less money for R&D, no control over it’s main OS Android, lumped in to compete with cheap Android phones, 64 bit problems, etc Samsung doesn’t have much chance.
Samsung considers anything with Android or Tizen installed a smartphone, even if it is really a feature phone with Android or Tizen running it (because they’re free). Samsung refuses to break down sales numbers of its product line, so we will never be able to truly compare Galaxy sales to iPhone sales, but I’m sure the iPhone is way, WAY out in front and extending its lead.
Shipped vs sold !
Im not sure if that is taken into consideration !
Apple numbers are sold numbers.
Samdungs numbers have always been misleading shipped numbers !
Shipped vs sold.
Smartphone vs cellphone.
Diamonds vs coal.
Shipped versus shipped.
But — Apple sells every unit they ship, while NO-ONE has any idea what Samcopy will sell out of that number.
“Samsung, having been forced to cede the process advantage to its best foundry customer, might have to settle for fabricating Exynos 7 on its older and inferior 20 nm process in 2015, as indicated by the Exynos 7 marketing page. In the process, Samsung will only fall further behind Apple.”
Lovely!
This is the best way to go thermonuclear on Scamsung since the courts won’t do anything to protect Apple.