Profit shocker
While Android came ahead of Apple in the smartphone OS race, Apple dominated the market in revenue, and took nearly 29 percent share of the market value, according to a recent research report from Strategy Analytics.
The top 3 players-Apple, Nokia and RIM-generated 64 percent of the revenue in the smartphone market, which reached $99 billion in total value last year.
While Apple had just 16 percent of smartphone market volume in 2010, it claimed a 29 percent share in terms of revenue. Nokia followed with 20 percent and RIM with 15 percent value share. However, Samsung, which sold most of Google Android smartphones in 2010, took only 9 percent of smartphone market revenue, outdoing HTC.
"While smartphones represented just over 22 percent of the handset market in terms of volume last year, they accounted for more than 50 percent of the market in terms of revenue," said Tom Kang, director of the Wireless Smartphone Strategies service.
"This illustrates how important the smartphone market has become for capturing mobile handset value. Unlike feature phones, smartphone average sales prices have held steady in the $300 range during 2010, bolstered by the introduction of new technology, such as the Retina LCD and AMOLED displays, as well as high speed 1 GHz processors."
Martin Bradley, Associate Director at Strategy Analytics noted, however: "The dominance of the top 3-Apple, Nokia and RIM-actually weakened in the fourth quarter, as the combined value share of these three players fell from 72 percent to 61 percent. The Android-based handset market, which will grow considerably in 2011, is still dominated by vendors like Samsung and HTC. However, Chinese vendors, like ZTE and Huawei, also have a presence, particularly in lower price tiers."
