Topic: Sales
Apple iPhone Price Under Pressure as Buyers Seek Cheaper Devices – Bloomberg (Jan 26, 2017)
This piece suggests falling ASPs due to iPhone buyers plumping for older models like the 6S rather than the new iPhone 7 models, but only quotes one analyst at Barclays to back up the claim. We’ll know soon enough what the ASP numbers for the December quarter look like, but they did fall this past year relative to the year earlier, in part because of the iPhone SE launch. It’s certainly also true that people are hanging onto phones longer, because they’re more capable, and that new installment plans from US carriers make the price of phones more transparent than the old subsidy model, and reduce the monthly cost once a phone is paid off. For all these reasons, I’m definitely seeing longer upgrade cycles for smartphones, but I see very little evidence that people are buying older phones new – in fact, all my conversations with carriers suggest the opposite – moving from an upfront cost to a monthly cost is driving people to higher-priced phones. In addition, the mix between the 7 and 7 Plus looks to have moved in favor of the larger device relative to earlier models, and that and interest in the jet black finish will also drive up ASPs. Color me skeptical at this point.
via Bloomberg
Can Huawei Catch Apple and Samsung? – Fortune (Jan 25, 2017)
This piece somewhat acts as if Huawei came out of nowhere into the number 3 spot behind Samsung and Apple in the global smartphone market, and while it’s risen rapidly to the top in individual markets, its global rise has been happening for much longer. It’s been the number three for the last six quarters (likely seven once Q4 2016 is reported on), and has been in the top ten since at least 2011. It may well have crept up on US observers, many of whom don’t tend to focus on emerging markets as much as the US and Western Europe, but this story has been underway for quite some time. Huawei is the big global success story among the ranks of Chinese smartphone vendors, most of whom have done well in China and some emerging markets but less well elsewhere. But Huawei still hasn’t cracked the US, where the carriers I’ve spoken to seem to be reluctant to put a relatively unknown Chinese brand on shelves next to premium products from Apple and Samsung. I don’t think Huawei needs to succeed in the US to be successful, and perhaps not even to catch Apple in raw market share terms, but it’s obviously never going to match Apple in terms of profits.
via Fortune
India’s smartphone user base topped 300 million in 2016 – The Economic Times (Jan 24, 2017)
Counterpoint Research has good data on the global smartphone market, and especially in emerging markets like India, so the numbers here are broadly reliable. India is a fascinating market – Apple and others have often compared it to China, but though the size is similar the demographics and wealth are very different, even if you compare India today to China a few years back. I’m not yet convinced that India is going to look like China does today anytime soon from a smartphone perspective, and that makes life very tough for a brand like Apple, which was tenth in the overall market share rankings. It did capture 62% of the premium market in Q4, but the premium segment is only a tiny fraction of the overall Indian market, which continues to be dominated by cheaper handsets, increasingly coming from Chinese vendors. You might be interested in this piece I wrote a few months ago about Apple’s prospects in India.
What happened to virtual reality? – Business Insider (Jan 21, 2017)
This piece argues that VR is currently underperforming expectations, and hasn’t panned out the way many of its proponents hoped. In reality (no pun intended), I think most of the companies have been pretty realistic about the prospects for the current generation of VR technology – Facebook in particular has said it doesn’t expect Oculus sales to be material to its overall financial picture, for example. So this is as much about inflated expectations around VR that came from others – observers, proponents, fans – than from the companies themselves. But in some ways that doesn’t matter – the narrative was that VR was finally here and going mainstream, and now it’s becoming that VR is falling short of expectations. The first was misguided, and now the second flows from those misguided expectations rather than from actual performance in the market. VR is still at a very early stage, and though Samsung has sold 5 million mobile VR headsets, it’s mostly still a niche proposition today, limited largely to the hardcore gaming market. It’ll take both technological advances and much more compelling content to appeal to non-gamers.
via What happened to virtual reality? – Business Insider
Google’s Big Marketing Push Pays Off for its Pixel Phone Over Holiday – Bloomberg (Jan 19, 2017)
This piece is an interesting counterpart to a couple of others I’ve recently linked to – another quoting Wave7 estimates for Pixel sales, and this WSJ analysis from earlier today on how hard Alphabet has been pushing sales of its hardware on Google search, given what this piece says about heavy TV advertising by both Google and Verizon around the Pixel. It’s also worth reading this Verge piece, which takes a much harsher stance on what these sales numbers and the supply shortages mean, though it focuses almost exclusively on the 128GB model. The point is, Pixels are in short supply, and there’s an estimate in this Bloomberg piece of around half a million sales, so this is a very different supply shortage from Apple struggling to meet demand for over 70 million phones per quarter – in other words, this isn’t about hitting up against theoretical maximum capacity for building phones, but about very conservative planning on Google’s part. Half a million isn’t bad, but it’s fairly clear sales could have been a lot higher with better supply. Presumably Google will learn from this experience as it looks to update the Pixel, possibly later this year.
via Google’s Big Marketing Push Pays Off for its Pixel Phone Over Holiday – Bloomberg
Pixel ‘demand is exceeding supply’ at Verizon stores: Wave7 – FierceWireless (Jan 16, 2017)
I’ve spoken to Jeff Moore, the head of Wave7 Research, multiple times, and he’s very good at what he does, so I trust these numbers in general terms. As usual with supply shortages, there’s the question of whether the crunch is coming on the demand or supply side – in this case, it seems likely that Google was simply very cautious in its planning here and has an unexpected hit on its hands with demand it now can’t quickly fulfill. I like Google’s new hardware – both the Pixel and Home are good devices that do their jobs well, and the Daydream is also a much more user friendly version of the mobile VR concept than the Samsung Gear VR, so I expect these products to do well, though the Pixel in particular will be hamstrung by not just these supply shortages but its lack of carrier distribution beyond Verizon. Look for signs of strong sales in Alphabet’s earnings soon too.
via Pixel ‘demand is exceeding supply’ at Verizon stores: Wave7 | FierceWireless
Apple Watch Sales Were Way Up Over The Holidays, Slice Data Shows | Fast Company (Jan 6, 2017)
Slice is one of those data sources you can’t completely trust – because the data is about online purchases only, it’s partial, and it’s also only ever directional. But this data suggests decent growth year over year for the Watch, which is in line with Tim Cook’s fairly vague but positive remarks on sales recently. The Watch should have sold well over the holidays – the second generation launched shortly before with some new hardware features (and better software), the base price is now cheaper, and there were deals on several models over the holiday shopping period. We won’t, of course, get hard numbers from Apple, but there should be enough in the reported results of the Other Products category to check if this is true come the end of the month.
Flurry Analytics: Apple devices were most popular mobile holiday gifts – Business Insider (Dec 27, 2016)
Until Apple reports its results for the December quarter, this kind of data is the best insight we’re going to get into how its quarter has gone. The answer appears to be pretty good, at least as it relates to iPad and iPhone sales, and taken together with other data on Mac, Apple Watch, and AirPods sales, it’s looking like a pretty healthy quarter overall.
via Flurry Analytics: Apple devices were most popular mobile holiday gifts – Business Insider
There must have been a lot of Fitbit trackers under the Christmas tree – Recode (Dec 25, 2016)
Fitbit’s app hit the top of the App Store on Christmas Day, and stayed there on Boxing Day too. But this isn’t the first time that’s happened – the same thing happened last year too, and the ranking of the Fitbit app always spikes at Christmas. Given that sales have been up year on year consistently, though less dramatically than in the past, this is very much what you’d expect.
via There must have been a lot of Fitbit trackers under the Christmas tree – Recode
Samsung Ends Note7 Sales Worldwide (Oct 10, 2016)
Samsung finally announced that it would stop selling the Note7 in all countries.