Sign in / up

back to article iPhone grabs 6% of world phone shipments

Apple increased its share of the world phone market in Q4 2011, accounting for 8.3 per cent of mobile shipments, but it's still a small fry compared to the likes of Nokia and Samsung. Look at 2011 as a whole. Some 1.55bn handsets shipped during the year, but only six per cent of them - 93m units - had the iPhone brand, market …

COMMENTS

House rules Send corrections
This topic is closed for new posts.
  1. batfastad
    Headmaster

    Pedant alert

    I might be wrong here but generally "bn" is generally accepted as meaning 1,000 million, also referred to as a milliard.

    So 1.55bn could be referred to as 1,550m. 713.9m is more than 8.3% of 1,550m

    Unless of course you mean 1.55bn = 1.55 million millions or 1.55x10^12

    1 1
    1. Anonymous Coward
      Reply Icon
      Anonymous Coward

      RTFAs

      8.3% is for Q4 2011

      6% is for the year.

      The other article says that apple sold 19% of 488.5m smartphones in 2011, which I work out to be about 93 million iPhones sold. When factored in with 1.55 billion total phones, this equates to 6% being iPhones.

      No idea where the 713.9m figure came from though. Maybe it's the total number of iPhones sold since launch?

      1 0
  2. BoldMan
    WTF?

    Sorry but my only response to this is "So what?"

    1 2
  3. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    So if only 8.3% still a LOT of iPhones still to sell.

    0 1
  4. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Someone boo-boo'd on the maths - 6% of 1.55bn would be more ilke 93m handsets not 713.9m

    Also the title seems to say 6% of world phone shipments but then the body says 8.3% - either way it's a helluvalot of iPhones. What would be more interesting would be to see 'by value' since a huge number of the other phones will be cheap-as-chips basic models shipped typically to developing countries.

    0 2
    1. Anonymous Coward
      Reply Icon
      Anonymous Coward

      and?

      The point is not what they cost, unless you just want the money, but how widespread they are. After all, the basic point of a mobile telephone is to ring someone or be rung by someone. So a large number of people have now got some sort of telephone, often living in circumstances under which they had no telephone or paid a lot to share one in some form before.

      What is the use of the smartest telephone, at the highest price (or lowest), if there is hardly anyone else with whom to communicate using video calling or some special messaging system or even your latest, very high quality and fast, comms. infrastructure/protocol?

      Anyway, I find the sheer numbers quite astounding, just thinking about the ability to manufacture and distribute those numbers of complex, electrical devices, nearly all of which are extraordinarily robust and fault-free under the most extraordinary range of conditions. This and the communications infrastructure supporting them must be one of the great technical achievements affecting and available to the whole world.

      2 1
  5. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    By value?

    700m $400 phones, or 1.5bn $40 ones? Which would you rather have..?

    0 0
    1. Prag Fest
      Reply Icon
      Stop

      Apple's profits or Nokia's profits. Which would you rather have..?

      0 0
      1. Dazed and Confused
        Reply Icon

        why choose?

        I'd rather have Apple's margins and Nokia's shipments. Then I'd be making real dosh :-)

        0 0
  6. Charles Manning
    Windows

    What if they measured revenue?

    Nokia is pretty much only selling low-margin candybar phones these days with no follow up market (app store, ad revenue,...).

    This market is very prone to erosion by anyone that can be bothered to make cheap phones. Even previously bottom-end companies like Huawei seem to be bailing out and are happy for Nokia to be king of this puddle.

    Nokia was once so good, but is now just a burned out wino. Pity

    0 0
This topic is closed for new posts.

Other stories you might like