Filip Novotny 74,5 million iPhones sold in the last quarter. That's exactly the kind of Apple number this week he announced on Tuesday's financial results conference call. The increase in sales compared to previous quarters also brought it a better position among smartphone manufacturers - it equaled the Korean rival Samsung for first place. She put it her way blog Strategy Analytics.
If we count the sales by units, both Apple and Samsung impressed in the last quarter of 2014 with almost 75 million units sold and 20 percent of the entire smartphone market. The Californian company has not been able to match the South Korean competitor in terms of volume since the winter of 2011. A few months earlier, Steve Jobs had died and the company's new director, Tim Cook, was slowly starting to gain the trust of customers. The current head of Apple can now claim another, albeit symbolic, success.
To a large extent, he can thank the newly introduced products led by the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus. Despite the initial mistrust of some customers, the bet on larger displays paid off. Last year's winter quarter (although according to Apple's custom it was called Q1 2015) was the most successful, understandably also thanks to the strong Christmas season.
Samsung, on the other hand, cannot count 2014 as one of its most successful. In addition to the competitive struggle on the market with more expensive phones, it is also being pressured by a number of especially Asian manufacturers who can nowadays sell relatively high-quality devices at an affordable price. Gone are the days when the lower middle class could only offer slower phones with poor quality displays and limited features.
The proof of these changes is the success of manufacturers such as Xiaomi or Huawei, and the increasing competition is also confirmed by hard numbers. While in the fourth quarter of 2013, Samsung held 30 percent of the smartphone market, a year later it was a full 10 percent less. The year 2014 was the first since 2011 when Samsung recorded a year-on-year decrease in profit. (It was then that the Korean firm took over from Apple the position of number one.)
The smartphone industry as a whole, on the other hand, saw an increase in sales, from 290 million devices sold in the fourth quarter of 2013 to 380 million in 2014. For the whole of last year, 1,3 billion smartphones were shipped, and the most significant increase was seen in emerging markets, which include, for example, China, India or some African states.
Comparing the success of a manufacturer based only on the number of units sold is very short-sighted. I think Samsung would be happy to sell a few million less smartphones, just to have a profit per device sold at least half of what Apple has.