Business Insider is a publication at war with itself. While BI’s Jay Yarow has finally admitted the obvious, that Apple kinda knows what it’s doing and smartphone market share is not the be-all end-all of measurements, Jim Edwards seems to be happily sailing along in a logical bubble, impervious to outside thought.
“Ugly Data For Apple Shows How Desperately It Needs iPhone 6 To Be A Hit” (no link but tip o’ the antlers to Rob Wensing).
Apple may be the most successful, envied tech company on the planet. But its dominance is far from obvious according to new data from IDC, which tracks worldwide smartphone shipments.
Is Jim Edwards congenitally dense or willfully obtuse? You make the call. Or does Henry Blodget have his alien appendages so far into Edwards’s brain that he’s incapable of any other thought than “LOW MARKET SHARE MEANS APPLE DOOM.”
Seriously, how many times does the Macalope have to explain this? Apple’s smartphone “dominance” has never, never come from market share. It has come from design leadership and having the largest profit share. Neither of those things has changed.
The Macalope’s just going to paste this whole thing because it’s a remarkable example of how to yell the same thing in three different ways:
Apple’s market share for the iPhone slipped year on year to just 11.7% of the entire market, while Android’s market share increased to 84.7%.
Similarly, while Apple sold 35.2 million phones last quarter, an increase of 4 million; Android phones reached 255.3 million new buyers, an increase of 64 million new phones, IDC reports.
In other words, there are seven Android phones sold for every one iPhone.
Also, for every one Android phone sold, only a seventh of an iPhone is sold! That’s, like, just the aluminum bezel!
Uh, yeah, Jim, those are all the same thing. Thanks for the redundancy.
If BI’s editors were not so numb from the drivel they have to read day in and day out, they might have suggested Edwards was repeating himself.
Edwards includes several charts with his yelly captions added:
ANDROID’S SHARE IS CLIMBING WHILE APPLE’S IS STAGNANT OR IN DECLINE TO JUST 11.7% OF THE MARKET
THANKS, JIM. GOOD INFORMATION. DO YOU KNOW HOW LONG THESE HELICOPTERS ARE EXPECTED TO HOVER RIGHT OVER OUR HEADS? THEY SURE ARE ANNOYING, AREN’T THEY? DO YOU THINK MAYBE WE COULD AT LEAST TURN OFF YOUR ROCK TUMBLER?
In the Apple worldview, iPhone is its own universe and the scale of Android is irrelevant. Declining market share is merely cosmetic as long as the profits keep flowing.
But …
But enough Apple propaganda about profit. Let me get back to market share again, because that’s awesome.
… Apple ought to be concerned that it is being relegated to just one out of every 10 phone buyers. App developers and e-commerce businesses tend to want to reach everyone they can, not just the richest 11.7%.
Right. Apple should totally be concerned about the people who don’t buy apps. Good business advice.
There is a persistent level of demand for small phones. … But it is not as significant as the demand for “phablets” with big screens that make videos and photos a pleasure.
Edwards cites a study of buying intentions in developing nations for this assertion. First of all, buying intentions don’t always pan out. Second, the survey offers six choices: The current iPhone 5 size and five other larger options. Third, how many people did the source interview? 1,386 … across nine countries. That’s 154 per country. But, hey, it shows Apple left out in the dark, so run it.
Phablets currently account for something like a third of the market. But according to Edwards, they’re the most important thing evah. Other than market share. See, Apple’s low market share is important, while the large market share held by smaller phones isn’t. Basically what’s important is whatever Apple doesn’t have. Can’t stress that enough.