The clock turns, the pendulum swings and we have a new leader on top of the Smartphone Wars scoreboard.
Apple’s iPhone was the big winner in global shipments in the last quarter of 2012. Actually, it was two of Apple’s iPhones. The iPhone 5 shipped 27.4 million units to top all smartphones on the market. It was followed by the year-old iPhone 4S that shipped 17.4 million units, according to a new report from Strategy Analytics.
The vaunted Samsung Galaxy S 3 flagship? It did not even beat the year-old iPhone 4S and came in third at 15.4 million units shipped.
We all know that Apple did extremely well during the holiday season (OK, maybe Wall Street doesn’t know). It sold a record 47.8 million iPhones and recorded $54.5 billion in revenue. Apple does well every quarter, really. But, it is important to note that the nature of Apple’s business is extremely cyclical. It does extraordinarily well late in the year while dipping in the summer months. This has to do with the consumer-oriented nature of Apple’s products and timing of device launches.
For instance, we got this exact same report from Strategy Analytics for Q3 2012 with the splashy headline, “Galaxy S 3 Tops iPhone 4S” in November last year. Apple had just released the iPhone 5 at the end of Q3 and the 4S was still Apple’s flagship for most of the quarter, retailing at $199 in the United States on two-year contract. When the iPhone 5 came out, the 4S was discounted to $99 on a contract.
Right in time for the holidays.
The difference between the Galaxy S 3 and the iPhone 4S is slim. From Q4 to Q4, Samsung’s flagship declined 2.6 million in shipments. The iPhone 4S rose 1.2 million with many of those units likely targeted towards lower cost-conscious consumers and emerging markets.
Strategy Analytics report looks distinctly at individual phone shipments. It does not include Samsung’s extremely long tail of “S”-related devices that the South Korean company uses to flood the world market with affordable Android devices.
When Apple started discounting old iPhones when the newest iteration was released, it defined its own long tail strategy. Apple CEO Tim Cook said at the Goldman Sachs Technology and Internet Conference last week that the company would not make a cheaper iPhone for the sake of making a cheaper iPhone, but would rather focus on making older models more affordable. We see now what he was talking about.
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