Apple: Enjoy Your Smartphone Market Share; We'll Console Ourselves With Profit Share
What Apple lacks in smartphone market share it more than makes up for in handset industry operating profits.
In its second quarter, Apple claimed a full half of the operating profits generated by the industry’s eight largest manufacturers, says Canaccord Genuity analyst T. Michael Walkley. And it did it with only an 18.6 percent share of the smartphone market and a 4.9 percent share of the broader handset market.
A remarkable achievement, pocketing one out of every two operating profit dollars in such a volatile and highly competitive industry–more so because Apple’s managed it by stealing share from entrenched players with a single phone that’s not even five years old. And, according to Walkley, that trend will likely continue for some time.
“While most of this share came from Nokia, we anticipate Apple will continue to gain share from Nokia and RIM during their smartphone OS transitions,” he predicted. “Given RIM’s pre-announcement this past Thursday combined with our skepticism regarding QNX and RIM’s ability to launch competitive ‘super phones’ during 2012, we believe RIM’s value share will continue to fall during the next several years….[And] we anticipate further declines [at Nokia] over the next several quarters as [the company] undergoes a platform transition.”