Apple Sold Twice As Many iPhones As Macs Last Quarter | Hacker News Reader

Apple Sold Twice As Many iPhones As Macs Last Quarter

techcrunch.com

15 pointsvaksel28 comments

"There's no chance that the iPhone is going to get any significant market share. No chance." -- Steve Balmer.

Apple has 10.8% of the market share. Blackberry's market share grew by a larger margin than Apple's. Nokia has 41% of the market, followed by rim.

And this is the market share for smart phones, which is itself a subset of all cell usage (12.7% of the cell market). So Apple has 11% of 13% of all cell usage, which is the context of Ballmer's quote. He also talked about it in terms of Apple's original pricing, which certainly was far more prohibitive than current pricing.

Given that Apple only supports 1 carrier in the US, I think 10.8% of the smart-phone market is a great start. I know a lot of people that would love to buy an iPhone if only it supported T-Mobile (without unlocking) or Verizon/Sprint.

By the way, do you happen to have a link for those market share numbers?

http://news.cnet.com/8301-13579_3-10245339-37.html

I think that market share is usually a bad way of looking at Apple's numbers.

Macs are only x% of computers, but that means nothing when comparing with Windows or Dell. Apple sells the OS and the hardware. To look at it as market share, you would need to compare it to both OS's and hardware. With hardware, the market share outlook hits more problems. Apple can get a higher margin when it sells say memory then Dell can. Market share is not indicative of much.

Iphones are (not soley) in the category of phones that people buy because they want that phone specifically. They'll switch carriers, delay purchases etc. The majority of phones are sold to consumers that will pick a phone in-store, get the cheapest one, choose flexibly from a range, etc.

That kind of leverage gets you higher margins and better deals with carriers.

Basically, you can't look at market share without looking at margins. Nokia & dell sit at 2%-4% while Apple & RIM sit at around 15% - 20%.

Apple and RIM combined will have an estimated ~%58 of the profits of the ENTIRE mobile handset industry in 2009:

http://www.maclife.com/article/news/apple_responsible_about_...

Have no mistake that Nokia and others are playing catchup.

Not sure how you got your numbers. Even in your (somewhat biased) link it says Nokia has 56% of the profits of the entire mobile handset industry.

This was widely reported. You didn't read the article closely. Nokia is projected to have 56% of the low end market profits. Not the whole market as per apple and rim.

We are both wrong on pieces of this. Nokia holds 56% of the entire market profit, in 2008 (the last year for which there is real data). RIM and Apple are projected to have 58% of the profits in 2009, which I am a little skeptical on -- in the current economy, I would expect the low end handsets to do better.

in the current economy, I would expect the low end handsets to do better.

They may sell more units, but they won't make very much profit, if any.

Why am I being downmodded? The source is the Wall Street Journal quoting a Deutsche Bank analyst.

CEOs of competing companies rarely praise the products of their adversaries

Then stay neutral. Trash-talk is just egg on your face later. There are plenty of neutral ways to deflect that question:

"I think it's an interesting direction for their product, but I'm not convinced that there's a major market there."

A lot less quotable and won't haunt you later.

"You can't watch a video and drive a car. We're focused on music." - Steve Jobs on including videos into iPods

"We're not making a phone." - Steve Jobs on iPhone rumors

A classic

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=So7qrFO_p44

This title might have struck me as even more surprising had it read "Apple Sold Half As Many Macs As iPhones Last Quarter."

Yeah, really, shouldn't that be expected? A phone costs much less than a computer and people are not impeded from side-switching by loads of apps that run on a specific OS.

Not these phones. Recall that you're also signing up for a two-year contract with AT&T. So about $2000 over two years.

People discount the monthly cost when considering a device with a service contract. And when it comes to phones most of them are just deciding which provider to go with, so the difference in monthly cost between two phones may be a consideration but the total cost is already factored in.

I'd love to see some market research about first-time buyers who bought the iPhone and the rates at which they adopt the Mac platform when they upgrade an existing PC Vs. the rates for PC owners who have no Apple products.

Or put another way - I'm wondering if the long term impact of this will be to raise Apple's market share on the desktop as well. That is, after all, one of the biggest advantages to managing the user experience as well as Apple does: strong brand cohesion and increased brand loyalty.

I buy Windows because it's the platform of choice for most developers. Yes, that's the power of the incumbent, and if I really cared about a better OS I'd work on changing the chicken-to-egg ratio, but in the short term, Windows has more software I want/need.

I plan to get an iPhone for the same reason: it is the current smartphone incumbent. I was satisfied with my Windows Mobile phone, but when my contract is up, I have to go iPhone; anything else, including Android, just won't have the same number and quality of apps.

I strongly wish to be proven wrong about Android, by the way. Show me developer support and apps I want, and I might consider it. Google Maps mashups are all well and good, but is there an Android version of [insert amazing iPhone app a friend will show me tomorrow]? Probably not.

And I’m wondering whether that matters.

It will be very interesting to see which role Macs play in Apples product lineup ten years from now. Maybe future’s Apple is all about mobile phones. Or not. Or something in between. I really wouldn’t want to bet one way or another.

They have good market penetration in the graphic design field, and that's a sector that will be slow to adopt any sort of cloud-computing or mobile solution for day-to-day work due to the size of the files that are dealt with and the exacting quality standards. I'd wager they will be a player in the desktop hardware side of things at least in that area for a while.

Well, I certainly do not believe that graphic design will be done on small mobile devices ten years from now.

Unless you count the recent cover of the "New Yorker" - done on an iphone!

Would be interesting to see a comparison of profit over materials and manufacturing for both, taking into account how many of each they've sold.

You can follow the conference call here: http://blogs.wsj.com/digits/2009/07/21/live-blogging-apple-e...

It's amazing they have $31 billion in cash, that should keep them floating for a while.

While they sold twice as many iPhones as they did macs, mac sales are up 4% from the year-ago quarter. That means they sold all those iPhones without cannibalizing mac sales. That's the big news.

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