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Thundering herd: iPhone edition
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First, congratulations Samsung. Magnificent job. Now some may claim that they got a let up by copying Apple, but let’s set that aside for now. Unbelievable the way they’ve grown their phone business.
Well, the only logical thing for a mega-million seller of handsets now and in the past is to aggressively push the mix towards smartphones. So let’s be careful not to give Samsung, a megacorporation that’s outsold Apple’s handset business from Day One, too much credit here.
I’ll be more direct, and this may be a repost, but I’ll say it again: Samsung does not deserve any kind of congratulations! They have shamelessly ripped off Apple left and right and it’s offensive that anyone would suggest that congratulations are in order. Sorry, Falkirk, but I don’t understand your position here. At all.
Android is a stolen product. On that point, I’m in firm agreement with the late, great Steve Jobs.
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FalKirk, look at the first Galaxy and a Samsung USB power adapter and then get back to Mercel.
That new S III sales report is…quite hilarious.
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FalKirk, look at the first Galaxy and a Samsung USB power adapter and then get back to Mercel.
That new S III sales report is…quite hilarious.
I cannot wait for the jury trial. Sammy can attempt to conflate the issues all they want with verbose testimony, but the jury—unless they’re visually impaired—will forget all the words spoken when they SEE the exhibits, making plain the extent to which Apple products were copied. Yes, slavishly.
They say a picture is worth a 1,000 words. Here, a picture will be potentially worth billions.
Sammy is going DOWN.
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FalKirk, look at the first Galaxy and a Samsung USB power adapter and then get back to Mercel.
That new S III sales report is…quite hilarious.
The Sammy Note has a nice form factor, highly reminiscent of the previous generation iPod Touch, in extra large size. The screen so many praise looked terrible. It was over saturated to the point of looking cartoonish.
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The S3 is selling so well that Samsung is now offering incentives. It’s been available for barely two months, less in the U.S.
Samsung?s new ?cash-for-clunkers? trade-in program offers up to $300 for old smartphones
http://news.yahoo.com/samsung-cash-clunkers-trade-program-offers-300-old-232051925.html
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The S3 is selling so well that Samsung is now offering incentives. It’s been available for barely two months, less in the U.S.
Samsung?s new ?cash-for-clunkers? trade-in program offers up to $300 for old smartphones
http://news.yahoo.com/samsung-cash-clunkers-trade-program-offers-300-old-232051925.html
I know that Samsung is getting grief for this, but it may actually be quite clever. They know a new iPhone is coming. If they can capture iPhone users (and others) and move them to their ecosystem before the new iPhone comes out, that’s a win for them.
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It’s another form of BOGO/classic incentivizing. Don’t give undue credit.
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It may be smart for Samsung to give these incentives now, but it calls into question their “sold out” claims. They’ve set themselves an annual target of 40 million S3 sales. They know full well the next iPhone will blow by that number in its first quarter. I think these incentives reveal that demand for the S3 is already waning. That does not bode well for the 12 month ASP for the product or unit sales numbers.
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I still say Samsung vs. Apple comparisons are somewhat irrelevant at this stage when it comes to market share.
Apple is a one-smartphone-per-year company that started from zero in 2007, with FY ‘12 sales likely to be somewhere around 120M iPhones.
Samsung ships tons of handsets (I dunno, 350-400M a year?), outsold Apple from Day One, and is aggressively pushing its mix towards smartphones.
Though I agree, if Samsung has a flagship smartphone with runaway success, has the production capacity, and has sufficient growth, there’s little “excuse” for stuff like “up to” $300 trade-in credits.
[ Edited: 07 August 2012 06:55 PM by Mav ]Signature
The Summer of AAPL is here. Enjoy it (responsibly) while it lasts.
AFB Night Owl Team™
Thanks, Steve. -
It may be smart for Samsung to give these incentives now, but it calls into question their “sold out” claims.
I’d say that it demolishes that claim. You don’t pay people to trade in their old phones for yours if your phones are selling out.
I think these incentives reveal that demand for the S3 is already waning.
I think that is a reasonable assumption.
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Horace Dediu takes on the chronic fog of Samsung phone sales
Unlike many of his analyses, Horace remarks that there is insufficient evidence for a firm conclusion.
The pivotal paragraphs in the summary
If we assume the global ASP is equal to the US ASP and knowing everything else about the mix of smartphones (54% of total) and revenues (as reported) yields a negative ASP for feature phones. Assuming the revenue figure is correct, either the number of smartphones is wrong (50.2 million) or the global ASP ($413) is wrong. The total phone number is also an analyst estimate which can be called into question.
There are many assumptions being multiplied here so I have very low confidence in the result, but we should ask ?what do you need to believe? in order for the 50.2 million figure to be real. The following scenario for example has to be true:
1. Global Samsung phone shipments total 93 million units (which means 42.8 million feature phones sold as well as the 50.2 million smartphones).
2. 6 million smartphones shipped into the US, equivalent to about 50% increase y/y, roughly in-line with market growth
3. 4 million Galaxy SIII shipped (but not necessarily sold through) at an ASP of $450. This results in a US total smartphone ASP of $413
4. The global smartphone ASP is significantly lower (at 80% of the US or $330)5. Global revenues of $18.14 billion is essentially all from phones
6. Global feature phones will have an average price of $36
If these conditions are met then it?s possible that 50.2 million Samsung smartphones did ship.
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About that market share deal…
In other words, there’s zero evidence that Apple is losing anything to anyone (aside from seasonality putting Apple at a 1-2 quarter “disadvantage” each year). They’re still mostly competing against themselves (to drive growth through great product) at the moment.
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The Summer of AAPL is here. Enjoy it (responsibly) while it lasts.
AFB Night Owl Team™
Thanks, Steve.
