“For the first time in several years, iPhone actually gained market share while Android lost share,” Mark Hibben writes for Seeking Alpha. “This is remarkable when you consider that IDC’s number includes all Android smartphones, even ‘white box’ phones.”
“There’s been a tendency to pass off the calendar Q4 results as just a blip, due to the advent of larger-screen iPhones. IDC itself tended to regard this as merely a short-term demand stimulus,” Hibben writes. “I view the impact completely differently. Since I view iOS as the superior platform, I see the impact of larger screens as unleashing pent-up demand that was inhibited by the small screen of the iPhone 5s and 5c. If I’m correct, demand will be sustained through the next generation of iPhone. Another indicator of the swing in momentum to Apple’s favor is a report from Good Technology on smartphone market share in the enterprise in calendar Q4. According to the report, Apple has a huge lead in activations by enterprise compared to Android, 73% to 25%. This is also an improvement from the previous quarter, when the ratio was 69% to 29%. The report attributes the improvement to the impact of iPhone 6.”
“In addition to the improvement in enterprise adoption, there was the report from Strategy Analytics regarding smartphone profitability. In calendar Q4, Apple’s share of smartphone industry profits reached a new high of 88.7% compared with 11.3% for Android. Compared to Q4 2013, Android saw its profit cut from 29.5% while Apple gained from its 70.5%,” Hibben writes. “If we combine IDC’s unit shipments data with the operating profit data, we obtain the operating profit per phone: $2.26 for Android vs. $97.50 for iOS.”
“The picture for Android is of a mobile device ecosystem that has strangled its profit in its quest for increased market share, and as of calendar Q4, wasn’t even successful in increasing its market share. This was probably no coincidence. Healthy profits have always been important for computing device ecosystems, and a lack of profit has tended to precede ecosystem decline,” Hibben writes. “The battle isn’t over, but I have an intuition that we have seen the turn of the tide.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: 🙂
It’s best not to mess with karma. – Steve Jobs
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I bought an Android – A Google Nexus phone- and tried to use to for a year as my primary phone. After seeing the pure Android for a year I will share this:
1- On it’s best day the current Android OS is inferior to early versions of iOS.
2- When the very same apps are offered on Android they are functionally inferior to those offered on iOS.
3- The Nexus Phone was just not a very good phone on the basics of being a phone. Twice when I needed a phone in a hurry, the phone had poor signal in areas where the iPhone has good signal on the same network.
4- Power management is very poor compared to iOS.
5- Podcast listeners beware- nothing on Android is as good as what Apple offers.
Headline is wrong – should read:
iPhone Knockoff-Theiving Android on Decline, Smiles!
Thanks I like your’s a lot better.
Wow, so unless you buy Apple products you’re a, what?
You really shouldn’t post such an inviting, open-ended question like that on this forum! I’ll be nice and say, “Not a particularly smart person [who buys something other than an Apple product].” Enjoy the malware and ID-thieving botnets, Android users!
Idiot.
It means you’re a deplorable.
Good riddance Android.
BUT: Apple always requires competition. What’s up and coming? Please don’t say Windows phone. *gag* A miracle at Blackberry?
They require competition, why? I don’t think that’s a given.
@Ron – definitely!
People who are really OUTSTANDING, do not, I think, need competition. They are who they are. Steve didn’t do what he did because he had “competition”. He did it because he was a brilliant, exceptional individual leading a brilliant, exceptional life.
If Androripoff and Microscum both sank to 1% of the market, Apple would still be producing insanely great products. I’m sure of it.
When there is no competition in a market, it stagnates. The prices are also jacked up to odious levels. These are reasons why monopolies are verboten in most business environments. As I often say, competition is the father of innovation.
That’s not to say that Apple isn’t extremely unusual within the business world. It innovates and pushes the technology envelope even without much (or any) competition. But making certain there is competition makes it certain that the future arrives at optimum speed, optimum quality and optimum price. We don’t need an Apple that just lays back on its laurels and becomes another Kodak. (I’ve personally been there, hated that).
LOL @ making sure the future arrives at optimum speed. The future will arrive regardless of anything that anyone does. It’s a feature of the universe.
No actually. Study some history.
Actually, Apple is NEVER concerned about the competition. Others may need competitive threat to motivate their innovation. Apple’s strategy and philosophy has, forever, been focus on making “insanely” great products that please customers. They never needed a competitor to innovate, so any eventual disappearance of Android from the competitive position will be rather inconsequential for iOS and the innovation therein.
another way to look at this is comparing it to training greyhounds to race. using the competition as the target leaves you trained to run in circles as greyhounds are trained to chase small animals on a dongle. apple runs free in the open meadows.
See my reply above to Ron. We all know Apple needs a good kick in the backside from time to time. Competition is THE prime way to motivate the best in business, including self-motivated Apple. It doesn’t hurt. It always helps.
I should point out that I have a collaborative personality and don’t need or want anyone jumping on my back to get things done. It’s typically the other way around with people resenting ME for telling THEM to get things done, all without competition pushing me on. But history and my personal experience proves consistently that competition is not only the best policy. It’s a required policy. Thus my statements about ANY company requiring competition.
Mr. Hibben, I would suggest no further articles should be written about marketshare, by you or anyone. When a company is pulling 89% of ALL cell phone profits, marketshare is an irrelevant topic.
I’m going slightly off topic..
many people had wanted a bigger phone and we are seeing how sales are skyrocketing because Apple gave them what they want.
so for years now people have been clamouring for a mid tower mac especially since the mac mini has been cut down in specs and expansion ability. The gap between the mini at 500 and the Mac Pro at 3000 is huge. In the PC world headless PCs outsell iMac types by a huge amount (just like people liked BIG Android Phones).
So Apple make your Mac desktop fans happy, you’ll be surprised how much market share you’ll gain vs struggling Win 8, give us the mid tower…
Macs only have 5-10% world market share, room to grow…
—-
I wrote the above (as I’ve done before) in hopes that somebody will kick it upstairs at Apple.
BTW a few days ago I bought a used reseller refurbished cheese grater 2010-12 Mac Pro for about 700. I already have a Mac Pro but it was too good an offer to pass… In my older machine I have 3GB Video Card which cost me $100+, nowadays I can buy a 4GB card for $99. I can soup it up to tens of gigs of RAM. (and apple if you’re worried about losing profits from people buying third party monitors, cards, I’m willing to pay a bit more for a Mid Tower mac with the same specs as a PC).
This is true. Apple has been blind to this obvious need for years. Now that the Mini has been half crippled and the server version is gone, there’s no option for small to medium size office servers with adequate internal storage.
There is a need for file services, DNS, FileMaker server, etc but Apple is pretty much saying take the Mini we want to give you or get a Windows box. We don’t care.
Some little case that could hold at least 3 drives would be nice. We don’t really case about the video card for server usage. How hard could it be?
Poor Man’s Phone.
Um you are insinuating that poor is negative and also lesser than someone who is otherwise well to do.
Rich and lower income, people of all classes and societies buy iPhones, and Android phones. I am not saying that iOS and iPhones aren’t superior. The title just rubs me the wrong way.
I would rather the term “Ignorant or Settler’s Phone” No need to use MAN either. I am not a feminist, but while we are tinkering here, might as well take care of that issue.
After a discussion with my nephew, I have come to the conclusion, that we are delusional. Not everyone can or should have an iPhone. Not everyone can or should be wealthy. This is not a world of the “Haves and soon to haves” To think that everyone has an opportunity to reach the hight of society if they simply apply themselves, is a flat out disgusting unmitigated lie, that probably ruins more esteem than anything else, preventing success and satisfaction with one’s own life.
The more people who have an iPhone is a testament to one of several factors. It’s that good, that people are willing to make the sacrifices to possess one, or the economy has picked up enough to allow more people to obtain the iPhone as common course of things.
I suggest that more respect is brought forward and less insinuation or derogatory language used to explain our deepest desires.
Not feeling so good today. Not my cheery self.