Apple: The World's Largest Handset Vendor By Revenue

April 21, 2011 at 7:15 am PT

Another milestone for Apple. It became the world’s largest handset vendor by revenue in the first quarter of 2011, overtaking Nokia to claim that title.

Astonishingly, it took just four years.

According to the latest research from Strategy Analytics, Apple’s wholesale revenues from the iPhone hit $11.9 billion for the quarter, exceeding those of Nokia, whose aggregated total revenues from smartphones, feature phones and basic phones combined was $9.4 billion.

Nokia shipped 108.5 million handsets in the first quarter of 2011, while Apple shipped 18.6 million iPhones. How did it manage to surpass the world’s largest mobile phone manufacturer in handset revenues?

Foremost, by focusing on the high-margin, premium segment of the handset market. Strategy Analytics estimates Apple’s global wholesale average selling price for the iPhone was about $638 in Q1 2011–some seven times greater than the ASP for Nokia’s various handsets, which it figures was $87. But there were other contributing factors as well: the iPhone’s iconic brand, its usability, the strength and appeal of the iOS platform on which it runs and the services portfolio it offers through iTunes and the App Store.

Those factors will continue to serve Apple well in the years ahead, though whether they’ll be enough to sustain its lead in the face of a fast-growing installed base of Android smartphones and Nokia’s new partnership with Microsoft remains to be seen.

Tagged with: Apple, digital, handset vendor, hardware, iPhone, John Paczkowski, Nokia, Strategy Analytics

comments so far. Add yours.

John Peters

You’ll give us anything just to write a pro-Apple article.
Anonymous

Why did AAPL miss the iPad 2 numbers so badly? Competition from Playbook and Xoom? Why would anyone buy an iPhone 4 with iPhone 5 coming out in September with many improvements and fixes over iPhone 4?

Feel free to answer any/all of these.

Thanks

freddysrevng
Anonymous

Why did AAPL miss the iPad 2 numbers so badly? Answer: Couldn’t make them fast enough…still backlogged…

Competition from Playbook and Xoom? Answer: No…sorry.

Why would anyone buy an iPhone 4 with iPhone 5 coming out in September with many improvements and fixes over iPhone 4? Answer: Because iPhone 4 works great and not everyone is a tech geek…actually MOST people aren’t tech geeks.
Anonymous

First of all, the ramp-up for the iPad 2 is faster than the ramp-up for the iPad, according to Tim Cook. Second, lots of people were waiting for the iPad 2, and people who bought the iPad had already bought them. So it is expecte the demand would be somewhat off this quarter.

It should be noted Apple sold every single iPad they could make. You can’t say that about any other tablet.

BTW, I’ve played with a Xoom at work. It feels cheaper than the iPad. It’s thicker. About the same weight. Honeycomb has some nice features, but overall the interface can’t match the iPad. Way too many parts of the interface don’t make sense in terms of shape or location. And resolution of the widgets in the OS is far worse than iOS.

Flash? Terrible performance and not touch-friendly at all. Glad my iPad doesn’t have it at this point.

As for the iPhone 5, nobody knows when it’s coming out. Anyone who claims they do are blowing smoke.

Considering the fact that the iPhone5 is being talked about so much, and we know many people are waiting for it, these iPhone 4 numbers have to be rather disquieting for the competition, no?
Anonymous

@ HRU – Acutally, many are disappointed that the “much improved” iPhone 5 isn’t coming out in June as the last couple of iPhone launches. So September is the new conventional wisdom on when iPhone 5 is coming out. I am quite sure that John P would concur. John? In any event, why would someone want to be locked into the old iPhone 4 tecchnology for a couple of years when they could have the “newest and best’ in September with the iPhone 5?

We have heard from a number of people that AAPL missed the iPad 2 number for the Q by “WELL OVER A MILLION” because people waited for iPad 2 to come out. Why would the same logic not carry for waiting for iPhone 5?

Consistency matters….

freddysrevng

John – Any thoughts on “new and improved iPhone 5 launch”???
Anonymous

But wait… why would you buy a iPhone 5 when the iPhone 6 is just a year away and will probably have LTE?
Anonymous

Wow, You would think with all that cash, that Steve Jobs would treat himself to a new outfit lol.

http://www.complete-privacy.au.tc
Anonymous

“Any thoughts on “new and improved iPhone 5 launch”???”

Plenty.
Anonymous

PlayBook was not shipping that quarter, and XOOM only shipped 100,000 units. Not relevant. The challenge was ramping up production of iPad 2 fast enough to meet demand.

Why would anyone buy an iPhone 5 in September when there will be an iPhone 6 the year after? Because they need a phone to replace an old phone.

So can you come up with a new troll tomorrow? At least do the work.
Anonymous

@ HRU – Please refer to John’s link “Plenty” for your answers, regarding, iPhone 5 launch in September.

The well informed will win in the end. You might want to consider doing a better job of DD.

Thanks, John for the post and your expertise.

freddysrevng

Apple: The World's Largest Handset Vendor By Revenue

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