Market researcher Strategy Analytics has released data showing smartphone sales across the board for the third quarter. There is nothing really new at the top of the market, with Samsung still outselling Apple by a ratio of nearly 2 to 1. This has of course led to plenty of our peers making this into a Samsung vs. Apple debate, but we think how both these companies find such huge success is far more interesting.
As a buzz friendly headline, saying Samsung out sells Apple 2 to 1 makes for an attention grabber and makes it sound like the Korean company is destroying its American rival. That is simply not the case though as Apple makes much more profit from its iPhone than Samsung does from its near 40 smartphones.
The raw data reads like this:
Samsung dominated Apple with 83.8 million smartphone sales during the third quarter to take a 23.7% slice of the market. In contrast the iPhone was responsible for 48.4 million sales and a market share of 13.6% share of the smartphone market.
So, Apple sold half as many handsets yet still managed to make more money, but Samsung fans should not feel blue about that as their company grew again and also made a load of cash. It always interests us how both brands have such contrasting ethos (Samsung’s cover all bases with products vs. Apple’s minimum product coverage but high margins) yet still both manage to thrive.
The Samsung vs. Apple debate is prevalent in court rooms and in innovation, but as a market comparison it is a non-argument. Instead, Samsung’s true fight is against other Android manufacturers.
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