Apple seems to have reached new heights in unit sales and revenues but its devices seem to have won over 75% of the mobile phone profits with just 9% of units sold in the market. Despite its relatively low share of al units, Apple still managed to take in the most revenues and earns by far. Asymco writer Horace Dediu, who is a former Nokia analyst, graphically depicted this for everyone to see:
Dediu previously presented how Apple rapidly became the most profitable phone market by the end of 2008, when the company’s iPhone was just barely over a year and a half old. Apple subsequently also took the top spot in mobile revenues last year too, although Samsung briefly surpassed Apple in revenues during the third calendar quarter. In terms of profit share however, Apple has led the industry almost from the start, and its share of profits among mobile phone vendors has continued to steadily increase.
The only other highly profitable smartphone maker is currently Samsung, which earned 16% of the industry’s profits, or as noted by Dediu, combined with Apple to earn a whopping 91%. Rim is in third place with 3.7% profit share, followed by HTC at 3%, and Nokia at 1.8%.
It should be noted that the figures only look at profits for the top phone markets that report their earnings. Other phone manufacturers such as ZTE and Huawei aren’t figured into the profit share figures. Given the state of the competition in the mobile industry, figures from these and other smaller manufacturers would likely reduce Apple’s unit share figures but may possibly have little to no impact on its profit share.
It follows that Apple cold maintain or grow its share of profits dramatically increasing its unit share as iPhone sales continue to increase, especially by wider rollouts into new areas and partnering with new carriers. It has been less than a year since Apple added Verizon Wireless as a U.S. carrier, and just a few months since it added Sprint. There are still a large number of carriers that still don’t carry the iPhone.
Source: Asymco
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