Apple share falls less quickly as Google operating system takes over ? but Windows Phone has barely sold half of the 2m handsets shipped, say new figures
Nokia is suffering dramatic falls in market share worldwide, and RIM has seen a calamitous fall in its US sales - while the Android mobile operating system is streaking past rivals in almost every developed country to become the dominant player everywhere.
New figures provided exclusively to The Guardian by Kantar WorldPanel Comtech shows Nokia's market share for smartphones dropping from 10% to just over 1% in the US over the past six months, meaning it sold only about 160,000 top-end devices there. The story is the same for the troubled Finnish phone manufacturer in every country over a 12-month or six-month period, with a collapse in market share that bodes badly ahead of its quarterly financial results due this Thursday.
The story is no more encouraging for RIM, which according to Kantar has seen a huge fall in the number of sales in the US, the world's biggest smartphone market. There its share has fallen from 32.5% in June 2010 to just 10.6% in March 2011, meaning that it only sold an estimated 1.4m devices there.
Apple is also being rapidly eclipsed by Android devices, though Kantar notes that the introduction in the US of its iPhone to the Verizon network provided an uplift to sales, so that it actually increased its market share there. But in other countries, notably the UK, Germany, France and Japan, the iPhone saw double-digit falls in market share - which could mean that even if it is selling more phones, it is not growing the number as quickly as the market is expanding.
Meanwhile Microsoft's Windows Phone launch has made barely a ripple, with the company's share of the market falling in every country as the last of its previous-generation Windows Mobile phones are phased out. Kantar's figures suggest that only 1m Windows Phone devices were sold since they launched - around half the number that Microsoft has repeatedly said have been "shipped".
"The key underlying trend is that Android is growing in every country," said Dominic Sunnebo, consumer insight director for Kantar. "Windows Phone handsets have had virtually no impact on the market; until Nokia starts to produce versions of them, I don't think that we are going to see anything, because there's no key reason why you could choose one over an iPhone or Android phone - those can already do everything you might want to do with a Windows Phone handset."
Sunnebo warned that Apple faces serious dilution of its market share unless it expands its handset range quickly. "The lesson of Android is that if you release enough handsets, they are going to sell. It's hard for Apple to compete against that if they're only producing one new handset per year, especially when the growth in this market is among the low-end devices. Apple is profitable in the developed markets such as the US, but if you look into the future, at countries like Brazil, Mexico and Argentina, there's no way that they can get serious penetration there because of the import duties adding to the sheer cost of the phone. Places like that are where [Nokia's] Symbian is dominant, and that's where Android is getting to be dominant now."
Rumours have circulated for some time that Apple will try to expand its iPhone offering to take in low-end buyers, as it did when it expanded into the cheaper end of the digital music player market with its iPod mini in 2004. But at that time it controlled the music player market - a situation that doesn't apply with mobile phones.
RIM faces problems because the ASP (average selling price) of its handsets is falling as it tries to expand sales - which keeps revenues strong but cuts profits. "They've realised that they can't compete with Apple and they're struggling against Android," said Sunnebo.
Meanwhile Windows Phone faces a difficult transition period while it waits for Nokia to make its move, announced in February, to bury Symbian on smartphones and replace it with Windows Phone. The Guardian has forecast that Nokia will not be selling any Windows Phone devices before October, when Microsoft is expected to release a substantial upgrade to the OS, codenamed "Mango", with enhanced functionality that should put it on feature parity with iOS and Android's present capabilities.
Kantar produces its figures from a global consumer panel, carrying out around 1m interviews per year in Europe alone. It tracks mobile phone purchasing and other behaviour. The data provided excludes enterprise sales.
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