Apple, Samsung snatch smartphone biz booty

Who's making money selling smartphones? Apple and Samsung and… er… that's it, market watcher ABI Research said today. Together, these two raked in more than 90 per cent of the market's profits. That's for the three months to the end of March 2012, and it's not at all bad considering the two of them only account for 55 per cent …

[Philip Lewis]

That says it all about where WP is and where its (not) going

“Nokia will have to grow its Windows Phone business 5000 per cent in 2012 just to offset its declines in Symbian shipments,”

[Anonymous Coward]

Instead of saying lets share our market position, both Apple and Samsung are continually at each others throats. It would be great if a third party to could come up with something that can compete, but Symbian is dying, Rim has a terminal illness and Windows appears still born.

[Anonymous Coward]

RIM could recover but they aren't going to

Since Android doesn't work well with keyboards and Apple have no interest in them, RIM have a hope. Unfortunately all the evidence is that BB10 will be focused on providing cheap iPhone knockoffs, even if some models do have keyboards. Crazy-they could do something different, but they're so scared that they won't.

The other problem now is Apple just have such a lot of money. I travel in on the Metropolitan line of the tube every morning and see more iPhones than anything else (probably BBs next, then Samsungs). Each iPhone is about £150 in profit for Apple to power R&D with and stay ahead.

[M Gale]

Since Android doesn't work well with keyboards...

You are joking, right?

[Perspyro]

Re: "Since Android doesn't work well with keyboards"

? Seems an odd thing to say.

Both my Android phones have keyboards. Both work. Both work better than "virtual keyboards" (even with swypesque functions). Not perfect, but both work VERY well.

Just the presence of cursor keys are a godsend!

[Anonymous Coward]

Nokia is doomed...

and it's a shame because the MeeGo-running N9 and Symbian Belle FP1-running 701 are both bloody good phones. It's impossible to believe that Nokia would be doing this badly if it was pushing those two handsets as it's flagship and mid-range smartphones respectively rather than the Lumia 800/900 and 610/710.

I see this ending badly for Elop, maybe even with the courts looking at his role in it all. Running a company onto the rocks so his ex-employer can pick it up for a few pence surely can't be legal.

[Alienrat]

Re: Nokia is doomed...

Of course it would be possible to believe that Nokia would be doing badly with another platform.

They put a huge amount of effort into trying to remove their huge dominance of the phone market, they have the skills to continue to fail with any platform.

[Philip Lewis]

Re: Nokia is doomed...

Cruel, but fair ;)

[Captain Save-a-ho]

Re: Nokia is doomed...

No reason to assume malice when stupidity will do just fine.

[Bob Vistakin]

It's all ended in tears - who'd have thought it?

How happy things were back when the Nokia Microsoft deal was announced.

Nokia’s Chief Executive Stephen Elop said that "Nokia and Microsoft will combine our strengths to deliver an ecosystem with unrivalled global reach and scale. It's now a three-horse race."

[Spearchucker Jones]

So HTC is dead? Sold fewer handsets than Nokia or RIM??

[Anonymous Coward]

so what

Saab sold a lot more cars than Aston Martin in 2010. It's not about raw volume. HTC is not in the same league as Nokia, or rather it shouldn't be.

[jarjarbinks]

How are Motorola and HTC not mentioned?

I am a bit baffled how HTC and Motorola are not mentioned? They sell a ton of phones too, and surely make up more of the market than Nokia, Sony and others? At the very least they should be mentioned in here somewhere.

[Sorry that handle is already taken.]

Re: How are Motorola and HTC not mentioned?

Lots of companies sell smartphones.

Two companies currently make money doing so, evidently.

[Anonymous Coward]

They took too long to get something done

If they'd made the decision in 2010, it could just have worked-same huge pot of money from Microsoft to sweeten the deal, Nokia a little stronger, Android hadn't quite seated itself in place as the dominant non-Apple mobile OS. In 2011 it was always a nuts decision. But WP7 was always too little too late. I think people will always wonder about what happened to Nokia, and Microsoft. Did they spend 2008-11 in a coma?

[Bernard]

HTC were fifth in Q1, but with rapidly diminishing share

http://htcsource.com/2012/05/htc-global-smartphone-marketshare-plummets-to-4-8-in-q1/

Perhaps they've dropped out entirely now.

Shame. I really like Sense, but 2 innovative brands is how most electronics markets mature (with the others being aggressive copycats who aim to do as much as possible as cheap as possible). It does look bleak for HTC.