Apple crosses the magical 1% mark in global phone market share

by Darren Murph posted Jan 29th 2009 at 6:22PM

Look out, world -- Apple's on the hunt for that number one spot in worldwide mobile market share! Of course, it's got like a bazillion miles to go before it gets there, but achieving that magical 1 percent is always a day worth tearing up about. According to data in a recent ABI Research study, iPhones now make up 1.1 percent of all cellphones, which is a pretty nice bump from the 0.3 percent share the original iPhone held in 2007. As expected, Nokia's still making everyone else look bad with 38.6 percent, while Samsung (16.2 percent) notched the silver and Motorola / LG tied for third with 8.3 percent apiece. Number lovers can dive into the links below for more where this came from, and feel free to dispute the facts 'til your heart's content down in comments.

[Via Electronista]

Filed under: Misc, Apple

Tags: apple, data, economy, growth, iphone, iphone 3g, Iphone3g, market share, MarketShare, research, sales

Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)

Highest Ranked

Okay @ Jan 29th 2009 6:44PM

Why isn't this article entitled, "Nokia sells 38.6% of world's phones!"

Oh, wait. I know...

Neutral

john @ Jan 29th 2009 8:20PM

Nokia FTW!

Neutral

D Mac @ Jan 29th 2009 9:28PM

I'll tell you why:

Nokia being #1 in marketshare is Old Old news. Why would they be reporting that?

Apple increased their marketshare by over 350% which is a greater increase than anyone else.

Apple hit a milestone percentage, that is the point.

I am not a fan of the iPhone, but quit hating and give credit where credit is due.

Neutral

EvilBit @ Jan 29th 2009 7:06PM

Weird. I used to live about half a mile from that guy.

Lowest Ranked

Amon @ Jan 29th 2009 7:29PM

@Okay:

Thats because Apple has:
1: increased market share significantly
2: done it with one model
3: in less than 3 yrs in business most of which was one country US operation

Neutral

De @ Jan 29th 2009 8:10PM

Apple did 1% with two phones by the way and the leader has sold 40 x as much. Clearly they have many phones that outsold the iphone

Highest Ranked

Okay @ Jan 29th 2009 8:41PM

Apple's increase was 0.8%.

Samsung's increase was 2.7%. That's more than three times the growth of Apple, and ABIresearch credits the Omnia and Ultra for that gain; that's two models.

Oh, but that's not news because it doesn't involve Apple.

In fact, even the company that conducted the research, ABIresearch, barely noted Apple's growth in market share as a footnote along with RIM and HTC's performance. The main focus of the press release was that we are entering the Year of the Smartphone, and that would have been the perfect title for a piece here on Engadget if they weren't such rabid iPhone fanboys.

"Welcome to the Year of the Smartphone!" not "OMG Apple has 1/35th Nokia's market share!"

Neutral

Chris @ Jan 30th 2009 7:33AM

Comparing Nokia and Samsung to Apple makes no sense...

Apple = 2 phones (2g, 3g) and 1 carrier. (US just to make it simple)

Nokia, Samsung = How many phones??? 2008 probably close to 100 each and across ALL carriers....

Can we say apples vs. oranges here???

A true comparison would be sku efficiency (how much money they are making off 1 item or in this case phone) and of course apple would win with the 3G phone outselling all other cells last year.

Neutral

squiggleslash @ Jan 30th 2009 9:47AM

> Apple = 2 phones (2g, 3g) and 1 carrier. (US just to make it simple)

The headline is "Apple crosses the magical 1% mark in global phone market share". Global. You can't say it's impressive because they only have one carrier in the US, that doesn't make any sense.

I don't know what Apple's US market share is, it may well be more than 1%, and their growth may well be more than 3X, but that's not what this article is about.

Low Ranked

ndcart @ Jan 29th 2009 8:00PM

That's what impressed me, that they accomplished this with one model. Okay, maybe two if you count both generations of the iPhone.

Neutral

Epsilon-Not @ Jan 29th 2009 9:50PM

And more if you count the 8GB and 16GB models, hm?

Neutral

Jake @ Jan 29th 2009 10:59PM

OK, some people aren't getting the point here: Apply may have only have 1%, and that seems incredibly minuscule, but that is comparing # of phones, not amount in money. This basically means that, while they only control 1/35 of the phone market that Nokia possesses, each of these devices cost AT LEAST $200, possibly up to $300, while many of Nokia's phones are free on contract. Think of that when you think percentage comparison.

Neutral

squiggleslash @ Jan 30th 2009 9:55AM

On the other hand, look at the fact Apple is starting at practically nothing.

Suppose Squigglephones were to start tomorrow. We could also start with one phone (and believe me, it'd be awesome. Six band UMTS HDPA+, EDGE, Wifi+UMA, twin SIM slots, Android, slide out minikeyboard, fold out full keyboard, twin SD card slots, 16G internal memory, 1280x720 main screen, camera capable of 720p24 video capture, stereo headset, ATSC output jack, one month standby time, smaller than a cigarette lighter when closed, completely unlocked, $200 for the base model sans-subsidy. I wouldn't put my name to anything else) and sell it and within three years we'd be bound to have a massive leap in marketshare too, by percentage growth.

In fact, we'd be bound to do that even if it wasn't the phone above, but a cheap-ass GSM phone with one SIM slot and a calculator's screen used for the display.

Why?

Because we're starting at nothing.

In Apple's case, they've gone from selling a $500+ EDGE phone to, last year, selling a $200 3G phone. Of course they're going to experience a massive surge in sales.

It's nice news for Apple, but it's not really headline worthy.

Neutral

Amon @ Jan 29th 2009 11:34PM

Guys, you dont get the point.

Nokia/ Sammy/ others achieved a few percentage points growth, but Apple get the headline as it went onto garner 3.6 TIMES the market share it had in 2007. No other brand did that.
Count 2 models or 4 or 5 if you want, my point is they didnt have more than 1 model of the phone at the same time in the market, 8gb or 16gb doesnt matter because Nokias/ Sammies of the world had expansion slots and no considering the multiples there! The feature/ functionality set they have on one iPhone was exactly the same as any other set sold anywhere else.

Dont want to want to take it away from Apple, and am not going to argue for argument sake.

Highly Ranked

helterskelter @ Jan 30th 2009 2:27AM

They introduced their phone to what, 20 new countries? Of cousre they're going to grow by several 100 percents.
Will they grow 3.6 times over the next year? No.

Neutral

Nak @ Jan 30th 2009 8:41AM

Amazing. Wow. 1% market share. That really deserves the headline in this story! Forget the other 99% (gazillions of phones really sold in the world) and just talk about a 1% achievement...talk about fanboy journalism!

Neutral

Amon @ Jan 30th 2009 7:21AM

There are too many things going their way apart from the introdcution in "20 new countries" so I have little doubt they can do better than most if not exactly repeat the show. Remember they havent even covered even half the globle with those 20 countries.
We can resume the debate again if the results indicate otherwise....
We have all something or else we want Mr. Jobs to give us on our beloved phone and I have little no doubt he can keep us interested. This phone can only get better and that should bring in more consumers into shops.
If they manage to screw up then I will personally concede it to you naysayers...

Neutral

Amon @ Jan 30th 2009 9:21AM

Name one phone that you would credit with changing the market as much as iPhone did! How many are you gonna remember 10 years later???

Slamming articles with fanboy crap is easy, understanding the underlying deal is not.

Read the Apple and AT&T results will you guys understand what the iPhone is doing to deserve the attention its getting!

Neutral

JSWinston @ Jan 30th 2009 12:41PM

@Amon

Name another phone that changed the market as much as iPhone? How about phones with more of an impact?

Motorola RAZR. Hate it now, it was the slim phone that caused a revolution.
Handspring Treo 180. Integrated a PDA with a cell phone. (the Simon Personal Communicated did it much earlier, but did sell much)
Nokia 6100 series. Included the game Snake and dominated the cellular market. This was a revolution in manufacturing.
Nokia 6160. Brought the web to the cell phone.
Motorola StarTAC. Introduced the idea of the phone being part of fashion. It brought style to the phone.
Blackberry 5810. Began the Crackberry addiction (how many other phones have a "disease" named for using them).

Remember the iPhone isn't revolutionary and much as evolutionary. The iPhone didn't add anything, it just brought a lot of ideas together (including amazing marketing). It still has some units to sell to match the N95 from Nokia (and will never approach the number of RAZRs sold).

Neutral

James VanDerbeek @ Jan 30th 2009 1:32PM

Amon you are right. Apple does deserve the attention they are getting because of the jump they made this past year.

The only thing that I can see that they did wrong was distribute the phone to one vendor, AT&T. Had they pushed it out to other or all carriers, they surely would have smacked down Nokia and their free phones!

I'm sure I'm like a lot of people who would rather not change their carrier just to get the iPhone...even though the iPhone is smashingly cool!

Side note...Can anyone offer up reasoning why some phone carriers offer up newly released phones at no charge while we get slammed here? Specifically, I know people in the UK that are getting phones like the Storm and Bold at no cost (new service or upgrade) and we end up paying full or close to full amount?

Cheers!

Neutral

Amon @ Jan 30th 2009 2:43PM

@ JSWinston:

You are right, yes these phones did make an impact, but seriously how many of these people even remember?

Immediately after each of these were released, there were "n" no.of others that offered the same feature, most of them bettered the originals.

Now compare that situation with the iPhone, how many phones out there have been able to come out with capabilities offered by iPhone (limited in no. mabe but outstanding execution if I may say so without being charged a fanboy, I truly am not one). Its been almost 3 years since the first iPhone came out!

Also, most of the features you mentioned for the respective phones have been implemented in iPhone quite well to say the least (sort of a repetition of what I said above, sorry):
It is slim as hell, is the best Phone+PMP+PDA out there today
In terms of build quality it has set a benchmark high up
Appstore has scored about half a billion downloads - music, games, apps - you name it...
Brings internet to a phone better then anything else
Is a cool phone to put it humbly- my 2 yr old son is attracted to the phone as is any of my CXOs guys as is my grandpa all for various reasons!- wide appeal, beat it
Has a cult like following, check out tons of websites on anything and everything related to iPhone

This is not a complete list yet!

Sorry I know we have kind of diverted from the subject of the post but again all this and more make Apple what it is today, a premier phone company with all others still trying to beat it.