Apple Thoughts - News & Reviews on all things Apple

"The mobile phone market is intertwined with the telecommunications industry which is vast and there are numerous competitors which are much more dynamic and better capitalized than the moribund PC or music player vendors. It's also a regulated and fragmented global market with 1.2 billion units and 5 billion consumers-far greater than any of the markets Apple played in for its first 30 years."

An interesting analysis on several data points of the industry since Q2 2007, but most impressive is the fact that RIM and Apple combined, moved from 7% in 2007 to roughly 65% in 2010 of the profits available to all the smartphone manufacturers. Talk about a transfer of wealth, the total of which the author figures to be between $4 and $6 billion, depending on the time period. It's also interesting that this was done in such a short time and without much of a fight, it appears they just rolled over. Or perhaps, more to the point, they were taken by surprise with the success of the iPhone. What are your thoughts?

"Apple's iPhone 4 antenna page, which shows the great lengths the company goes to in order to test its handsets, no longer features videos of competing smartphones losing reception when held improperly."

The videos, while pulled from the Apple site showcasing the design and test labs, are still available on the YouTube channel for Apple. The video above is from the YouTube channel showing the signal degradation on a BlackBerry Bold 9700. Several smartphone makers weren't happy after the press conference on antenna issues, saying their smartphones didn't suffer from the same problem. Apple, in turn, posted several videos showing they did indeed have the same problem. Not sure why they pulled them from their design lab site, perhaps they felt they had made their point? What are your thoughts?

"While Apple's chief executive Steve Jobs said AT&T wouldn't let him reveal its proprietary data about dropped call statistics for competitive reasons, the mobile provider has revealed some numbers in an effort to defend its network from poor dropped call scores collected by ChangeWave."

image(s) credit: CanStockPhoto

Very interesting article! Reminds me of the stories that I've heard and read about business metrics and statistics: "... we don't like these numbers that we're seeing; let's commission another company to collect information from subscribers to see how we're REALLY doing." AT&T wasn't particularly pleased with the results of a study from ChangeWave showing that their rate of dropped calls was higher than the competition. This was a survey of 4,040 smartphone users who were asked to report their own percentage of calls dropped. Is 4,040 users a statistically valid sample?

Another study contradicted this first set of results, and showed that AT&T's reliability was much, much closer to the industry leaders, or to use real world data, was a "difference of less than two (2) calls [dropped] out of 1,000." The study emphasized that location (cell tower proximity) is a major factor in call quality and reliability, so, the bottom line is that calls will get dropped, especially in areas of "lesser" coverage.

"Apple moved ahead of rival Motorola in unit sales in the first quarter of 2010, with the iPhone taking a 3 percent share of the total cell phone market."

That is, based on this chart, a 130% growth from the same period last year for the iPhone. But the iPhone is still lagging behind that pesky Blackberry in number five.

"Paul Carton, Director of Research at ChangeWave Research, reported yesterday at investorplace.com that Apple iPhone is gaining steadily on BlackBerry's market share, a great feat considering BlackBerry's entrenched position in the business sector."

BlackBerry at 40, iPhone at 30 and closing, Palm bringing up the rear with 7!! Sounds almost like a horse race being broadcast. Regardless, iPhone is definitely making big inroads on BlackBerry with 36% of those likely to buy in the next 90 days planning on buying an iPhone. If AT&T loses exclusivity, I think it is really going to be pretty much iPhone and the also rans. What are your thoughts?

"Apple's iPhone held onto a 13.7% share of global smartphone unit sales in the second quarter, outpacing Microsoft's Windows Mobile, which now claims just 9% of the market, according to Canalys."

Symbian has over 50% of the overall global market when you talk operating systems, followed by RIM then Apple. As far as manufacturers go, Nokia has the lead with 44.3% of the market, followed by RIM with 20.9% and then Apple with 13.7%. Interesting to note, in 2006, Nokia's Symbian system had over 70% of the market.

"It was a good second quarter for Apple's iPhone as the company maintained third place in global sales among smartphone companies, according to a new report from market research firm Gartner."

This is starting to become commonplace for the iPhone, impressive gains when the quarterly results are announced. The iPhone once again had impressive numbers, in fact the largest increase, in the smartphone market for the second quarter of 2009. Apple sold over 5.4 million iPhones and increased market share to 13.3 percent. The same period in 2008 they sold a meager 892,000 units and had just 2.8 percent of the market.

"Apple's share of AdMob's mobile ad requests grew significantly both at home and abroad in April-for the first time, the iPhone OS has surpassed Symbian worldwide."

What jumped out for me is that while the iPhone has only 8% of the world wide smartphone market share in unit sales compared to the 52% that Symbian-based phones have, the iPhone ad requests and HTML web traffic surpassed Symbian. In the case of HTML web traffic there was no comparison, Symbian wasn't even in the same ball park. These stats don't include the iPod Touch since it technically isn't a smart phone, this is all from the iPhone.

"Lower prices and wider availability are likely responsible, but whatever the reason, Apple probably isn't super pleased with the news today that Research in Motion's BlackBerry Curve has surpassed the iPhone as the No. 1 most popular smartphone in the U.S."

Ouch. I would agree they are probably not happy about slipping to number 2 on the list generated by The NPD Group, a wireless industry market research company. And right behind the iPhone on the list is the RIM Storm. In fact, RIM takes 3 of the top 5 spots with their Pearl (non-flip version) in number 4 followed by the T-Mobile G1. The stats were compiled over a three month period ending in March, which showed that RIM's smartphone market share increased 15% to almost 50% of the market. Apple and Palm both dropped about 10% during the same period. This was attributed to an aggressive "buy-one-get-one" promotion. It probably doesn't hurt that they have more carriers than the iPhone either.

"The gales of the Blackberry Storm gales just weren't strong enough to wash away Apple's iPhone success... The Storm seems to have severely underperformed in customer satisfaction. And now, the latest figures from Blackberry maker Research In Motion (RIM) show that it has underperformed in sales, too," Daniel Ionescu reports for PC World.

Another "iPhone Killer" under performs, and the unit sales really tell the story. The iPhone outsold the Storm 4:1, two million units versus one half million units during the same period from November 2008. The user experience with the Storm has been a big problem, the phone suffering from numerous glitches and bugs. It never works well when you rush a product to market, which is apparently what happened here. I don't have much experience with smartphones, since the iPhone is the first one I've owned (I've always been a flip-phone man), so I may be a little spoiled. Anyone out there have a horror story with an "iPhone killer?"

"For those of you who weren't listening in to Apple's earnings call today, you missed a prime moment of defensiveness when Tim Cook fielded a question about how the company plans to stay competitive amidst new entries from the likes of Google and, more recently, Palm. What seemed like an answer due to end with a "we've got some great new stuff on the way" slant, Cook dovetailed into how the company views its new smartphone competition."

Sounds like they are paying attention to the market and the competition, as anyone that has followed Apple would expect. Tim Cook pointed out that while they "like competition because it makes us better, but we will not stand for companies infringing on our IP."

"One shining year -- that's how long the iPhone-optimized iGoogle search page hung around, and now we must tell it goodbye."

Guess it was a matter of time for Google to standardize the display over all mobile browsers, especially since they are now in the phone business. I guess it seems logical to me to have the same page show on all mobile browsers, especially when you consider the Android coming into the mix. Google wouldn't want one phone to have an advantage over their own phone now would they? I didn't use the iPhone iGoogle interface all that often so it doesn't matter too much to me. Any power iGoogle users out there upset over this change?