Significant Android to iPhone switching weakens market for Samsung Galaxy S6
“Apple’s impressive sales figures from Q4 2014 continue to have an impact on the smartphone market, with a recent survey highlighting the number of new switchers from Android to iOS devices (reports AppleInsider’s Neil Hughes),” Ewan Spence reports for Forbes. “The numbers are good for Apple, but they also highlight the challenge facing rival manufacturers struggling to find profit in the smartphone space.”
“Looking at the sales of the iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus, Cowen And Company’s Timothy Arcuri discovered that ‘about 25 percent of all iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus purchases came from users who are new to the iPhone platform, mostly Android switchers,'” Spence reports. “That could be as much as seventeen million users who have left Android for Apple during the quarter.”
“This is where the Android manufacturers have an uphill battle. Seventeen million users who are happy to pay for a high-priced smartphone (with an associated high margin) is a particularly attractive demographic… Those users can all be seen as legitimate lost sales, and are not easily replaced,” Spence reports. “With Samsung needing to tap into these customers to generate strong sales and financial returns for the Galaxy S6 family, Apple’s strong iPhone sales have not only handed Apple one of the greatest quarters of any business, it has removed a significant chunk of the addressable market that its rivals would have hoped to target during 2015.”
An iPhone with a larger screen option will hurt Samsung immeasurably more than myriad, unending traipses through the legal morass. – MacDailyNews Take, May 2, 2014
