

iOS catches up to Android in December sales, thanks to iPhone 4S - shawndumas
http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/news/2012/01/ios-catches-up-to-android-in-december-sales-thanks-to-iphone-4s.ars

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cryptoz
...in the USA. That fact isn't mentioned anywhere in the article. You have to
go to their source at neilson.com to find out that the market share they are
referring to is confined to 4.5% of the world population.

So, these are USA numbers only. I wonder what the broader picture looks like?

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guelo
To be fair, although USA might be 4.5% of the world population they account
for the largest amount of smartphone sales of any country with about a third
of all smartphones worldwide being sold in the U.S.

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untog
Oh, sure. But future growth at this point depends on getting non-smartphone
users to upgrade- within the US, but probably more outside of it. That may
well mean lower cost devices and PAYG phones- something that Android does and
that (judging by what they've been saying recently) Windows Phone is going to
be getting into.

Apple doesn't really seem too interested. I know they sell the 3GS for cheap
these days, but it _is_ old technology- compare the specs against something
like the Nokia Lumia 710 (a decidedly entry-level device).

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ryandvm
I'm all for tight competition since it keeps both Apple and Google playing
their A game.

That said, I'm somewhat amused that anyone is surprised with these figures.
The iPhone 4S was 6 months late. There were literally millions of iPhone
faithful that were sitting on their hands eagerly waiting for the 4S so they
could upgrade. If you stretch this chart back another 6 months you'll see a
considerable sag in iPhone sales as the 4S waiting game began.

Android, due to it's constant upgrade stream, doesn't suffer from this cycle.
Let's take a look at some yearly charts before we call this race...

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ugh
Do you really – honestly — believe that there are millions of iPhone faithful?

There are people who buy smartphones and people who, when given the choice,
will pick an iPhone. There are not millions of iPhone faithful. Those have to
be a tiny minority.

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cryptoz
> There are not millions of iPhone faithful. Those have to be a tiny minority.

Your statements don't make sense. There can easily be millions of iPhone
faithful _and_ those millions can also be a tiny minority. How many iPhone
users are there in the world? I don't know, but could it be on the order of
100 million? I think so (especially with the knowledge that there are a few
hundred thousand purchases every day, it stands to reason that there could be
close to 100 million iPhone users worldwide - please correct me if you have
better figures).

With those estimates, a 1% tiny minority represents a 1-million-strong iPhone
faithful group.

~~~
ugh
The scales involved make that problematic. _Apple fanbois_ don’t make or break
Apple’s holiday business, they are inconsequential to their smartphone
business given its scale.

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ZeroGravitas
It's not actually December sales, it's the 3-month period leading up to
December (in the US).

This of course includes Oct 14th, the US release date of iPhone 4S, (also the
first release on Sprint) and the date on which the other two models were
refreshed/repriced.

Still a whole lot of phones getting sold, but you might otherwise look at the
graph and think the sales were escalating swiftly in the two months after
(re-)launch, which I doubt is the case. More likely a spike for launch
followed by a dip followed by another spike for Christmas.

Also, The first figure given for Android is also an unusual spike up from
their previous figure of low fifties probably caused more by people _not_
buying iPhones in the three months before the iPhone 4S came out, rather than
even larger than normal numbers of people buying Android phones in that
period. It would be interesting to see what the difference would be if they
didn't normalise it to 100%.

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saturdaysaint
Expect the marketshare split to stay fluid like this until one of the
platforms is successful at locking in institutions - schools, businesses,
creative professionals, government, etc.

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terhechte
I'd wager that the reason for the surge is primarily the free 3GS instead of
the 4S. It's the entry into the low cost market that was previously dominated
by cheap android devices.

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smspence
I highly doubt it. The 3GS is available only on AT&T, whereas the 4 and 4S are
available on several US carriers.

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terhechte
Oh, didn't know that, I'm in Europe. Ok, good to know.

