Market share – Tech Narratives

New smartphone shipment and market share numbers are out for Q2 from various analyst firms, and they all show the same broad pattern: somewhere between a modest decline and modest growth year on year for the market as a whole, modest growth for Apple and Samsung, and strong performances by three Chinese vendors, with Huawei making significant gains in the number three spot. IDC, Strategy Analytics, and Canalys among others differed slightly on the exact shipment numbers, while Strategy Analytics seems to find another 20 million or so shipments somewhere compared with the others. The top four spots have now remained unchanged for over a year, with the exception of Q4 last year, when Apple briefly pipped Samsung for the number one spot, though this quarter Xiaomi’s resurgence squeezed Vivo barely out of the top five. Huawei got within a few million of Apple’s sales total for the first time off the back of pretty strong growth, but Xiaomi had by far the fastest growth (which you already know if you’ve read two earlier pieces on Huawei and Xiaomi). The broader picture has Chinese vendors dominating the top ten, though these firms only report the top five in their public releases: by my count, Chinese vendors take seven of the top ten spots, with Apple, Samsung, and LG the only exceptions. And those Chinese vendors rely enormously on the Chinese market for their sales, while several have no presence in the US at all, meaning that the smartphone market is increasingly fragmented globally, with different players taking the lead in different parts of the world.

via Android Police

Maturing Smartphone Market

Apple Drops to Fifth Place in China Smartphone Market in Q2 (Jul 26, 2017)

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Midia Suggests Amazon Now 3rd Largest Music Streaming Service (Jul 20, 2017)

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Streaming is Saving Music

Gartner Says PC Shipments Declined 4.3% in Q2, 11th Straight Drop, Hit 2007 Levels (Jul 12, 2017)

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The Decline of PCs

Apple’s Share of Video on Demand Sales and Rentals Said to be Falling (Jul 10, 2017)

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Lyft is Catching up to Uber in App Downloads, But Not Because of Uber’s Troubles (Jun 28, 2017)

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Uber's Culture is Toxic

Google’s Education Strategy Profiled in New York Times (May 15, 2017)

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The Decline of PCs

Strategy Analytics Says Apple Top Wearables Vendor in Q1 (May 8, 2017)

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Wearables are Struggling

eMarketer Estimates 71% Market Share for Amazon Echo, 24% for Google Home in 2017 (May 8, 2017)

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IDC Says Q1 Tablet Shipments Were Down 8.5% Year on Year (May 5, 2017)

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The Decline of PCs

Counterpoint Says Apple has 80% Share of Premium Smartphones in China Despite Overall Fall (May 4, 2017)

Counterpoint, which I’ve referenced previously here as a solid source on smartphone market share and so on, especially in Asian markets, has an update on Q1 smartphone performance in China. The headline is that Apple, Xiaomi, and especially Samsung saw their shipments drop significantly year on year, while local companies Oppo, Vivo, and Huawei did better, in a market that grew just 4% year on year. The Apple drop is worth noting because China performance has been a major talking point on its recent earnings calls (including this week) and there are lots of explanations flying around about why it’s struggling there. I linked to this piece a while back, and Ben Thompson had an interesting piece this week on Stratechery about the role WeChat plays in China and how that impacts Apple. But it’s worth noting the details on the premium market in China in this Counterpoint post. It argues that Apple’s performance in China (as elsewhere) is highly cyclical, but that it consistently takes 80% of the $600+ market. In other words, Apple’s share remains very strong in the segment where it competes, but much of the activity in China is at lower levels where Apple doesn’t compete. In that sense, there’s nothing new here, and the growth of the sub-premium segments is to be expected in a maturing market that’s reaching lower income tiers of the population. But if the premium segment is actually shrinking in real terms rather than just relative terms, that’s more problematic because it would indicate consumers who could afford iPhones are nonetheless choosing to buy the cheaper alternatives. So far, I’ve seen little evidence of that, but it’s worth watching future numbers from Counterpoint and elsewhere to see if that pattern starts to emerge. For now, I’m still more inclined to read what’s happening in China as part of a cycle which is already starting to correct and should do so more meaningfully later this year.

via Counterpoint

Apple is Doomed

IAB Reports US Mobile Ad Spend Was Over Half Total Digital Spend in 2016 (Apr 26, 2017)

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Advertising Sustainability

★ iPhone Ownership in US Driven to All-Time High by iPhone 7 Models (Apr 20, 2017)

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Apple is Doomed

Gartner Says Worldwide PC Shipments Declined 2.4 Percent in First Quarter of 2017 (Apr 12, 2017)

Yesterday, we had IDC’s PC numbers for Q1 2017, and today we have Gartner’s. As usual, they show pretty different trends (IDC the first growth in five years, Gartner the lowest total shipments since 2007), because the companies define the market in different ways. Whereas those IDC numbers were for “traditional” PCs, these Gartner numbers include what some call “detachables” and Gartner calls “ultra mobile premiums” such as the Microsoft Surface. Interestingly, though, whereas in the past those detachable and convertible devices have led Gartner’s numbers to grow faster than IDC’s, the situation now appears to be reversed. That’s interesting, given how hot this category has been and how much it’s helped the overall PC market in the past couple of years. My guess is that the trend will go back to its previous pattern the rest of the year. The two companies do agree on some trends though: HP had a great quarter, particularly in the US, and component shortages are driving some interesting trends. However, whereas IDC saw the latter driving higher shipments in Q1 to get ahead of price increases, Gartner focuses on the downward pressure on shipments the component shortage is likely to cause in the rest of the year due to price increases. IDC and Gartner also agree that the “other” category is suffering badly as the big names consolidate share.

via Gartner

The Decline of PCs

Gear VR Most-Used Headset, Daydream Barely Registers at VR Porn Site – Variety (Apr 6, 2017)

It’s unfortunate that we have to rely on stats from a porn site to measure VR market share, but beggars can’t be choosers. Obviously, there may be reasons why the usage this site sees isn’t representative of the market as a whole, but the numbers here are far from surprising: Gear VR is by far the largest chunk of usage, which absolutely aligns with the numbers we’re seen in terms of devices sold / in use. Google’s Daydream, meanwhile, has a tiny fraction of the market, which is also unsurprising given its relative newness and the limited distribution of headsets and compatible phones. Gear VR has become the de facto standard for Android VR and mobile VR more broadly, and Daydream VR will only do well if essentially every other Android vendor supports it in their handsets and pushes it aggressively to consumers. So far, that hasn’t happened, with predictable results.

via Variety

AR vs VR

Android overtakes Windows as the internet’s most used operating system – TechCrunch (Apr 3, 2017)

This is an interesting counterpart to last week’s item about revenue from Android apps surpassing revenue from iOS apps in 2017. That news had been a long time coming, because Android has long since been way out in front of iOS in terms of user numbers, but revenue for developers has lagged anyway. This week, the news from Statcounter, which measures online traffic, is that Android has surpassed Windows as the source of the greatest share of online traffic by operating system. That, too, is likely a lagging indicator for the number of people using Android versus the number of people using Windows, but for a different reason – much of online usage on mobile is in apps, whereas on a PC it’s almost all web-based, so PCs will always over-index on web usage relative to mobile devices. There’s a good chance that Android has hundreds of millions more users than Windows already.

via TechCrunch

Apple Tops Samsung in the Fourth Quarter to Close Out a Roller Coaster Year for the Smartphone Market, According to IDC (Feb 2, 2017)

Pick your poison here – most of the big names have put out similar releases this week crowning Apple the victor in the December quarter for smartphone sales, narrowly pipping Samsung. This is an entirely symbolic victory, but it’s the kind of thing that often causes the more negatives around Apple to die down temporarily (which isn’t to say there haven’t still been various articles this week warning that Apple’s next phone had better be be a big deal or else). Two other things worth noting here: Apple only ever comes in at number 1 in the December quarter, when it sells massively more iPhones than in any other quarter, and so for the year as a whole Apple will always be behind Samsung. Secondly, the IDC figures and others I’ve seen seem to have used Apple’s official iPhone sell-in figure for its first fiscal quarter – there are issues with using sell-in as opposed to sell through in these contexts, but I see the logic in using an official figure rather than an estimated one. However, there’s a problem with this approach of taking Apple’s number this quarter, because Apple’s quarter actually started in the last week of September this year, giving an extra week of sales very early in the iPhone 7 cycle. Without that extra week of sales, it’s very likely Apple wouldn’t have been ahead of Samsung, but I’ve seen none of these market share numbers acknowledge that fact or adjust Apple’s number downward to account for it.

via IDC

Apple
iPhone

Apple is Doomed