Gartner have just released their first quarter worldwide smartphone and mobile sales to end users estimates.
They say “Samsung took back the world’s No. 1 smartphone position from Apple, selling 38 million smartphones worldwide. In addition, Samsung’s Android-based smartphone sales in the first quarter of 2012 represented more than 40 percent of Android-based smartphone sales worldwide; no other vendors achieved more than a 10 percent share of the market.” They estimate Apple sales as 33,1 million although Apple reported them as3 5.1 in their quarters results..
Re Quarter 4 of 2011 we reckoned it was “too close to call” with just possibly Samsung being pipped at the post .
Re this last quarter both IDC and Strategy Analytics have Samsung ahead with only IHS iSuppli provisionally showing Apple in the lead. Getting out our old reliable calculator we reckon that a horrible average of the 4 has Samsung at 39.2 million v’s Apples 34.6 million.
A very valid point highlighted by Gartner is their dominance of the smartphone market. with “ … Apple and Samsung, raising their combined share to 49.3 percent, up from 29.3 percent in the first quarter of 2011 …”
On the SmartTV front Strategy Analytics have done a survey in the US, France, Germany, Italy and the UK and discovered “ …that nearly half of existing iPhone users would be very or somewhat likely to buy an Apple iTV soon after its launch” . They equate the time frame to year one.
Using our spreadsheet in preference to our tried and trusted calculator this time:
| Cumulative | US & Europe | Potential | Potential | ||
| to Q1 2012 | sales six | year one TV’s | year one TV’s | ||
| millions(mn) | months ended | units mn | Revenues $mn | ||
| March 31 2012 | at $1.000 | ||||
| iPhone unit sales | 218.1 | ||||
| % total | 59.6% | 130.0 | |||
| Retirals & other | 15.0% | -19.5 | |||
| Nearly half | 48.0% | ||||
| Possible TV sales | 53.0 | 53,035 | |||
WOW! So this might mean 53 million unit TV sales in year 1 and revenues of $53 billion taking account of the lower price preference whereby “ ….35 percent of surveyed US consumers indicate willingness to pay $1000 or more for an Apple-branded TV, only 14 percent would be willing to pay any more than $1600.”
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So let’s have a few reality checks.
- Apple per last quarters worldwide mobile sales from Gartner has about 8% of the total market. Lets optimistically say the TV market in a year or 2 might be 275 million pa. hmm down to 20 million ish
- The iPhone has been around since 2007. In its first year (4 quarters) a little over 5 million units were sold.
- The iPad Apple’s quickest growing product introduction per Tim Cook achieved sales of 19.5 million in the first 4 quarters
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Our complete guess would be that anything over 10 million units in year one would be exceptional. Price wise we will be surprised if it is not nearer $1,500 than $1,000 although $1,249 is a possible!
We shall see!
