Sunday, June 9, 2013

Tons of Smartphone Demographics And Trends Released This Week

Lots and lots of data released over the past few days from research firms such as IDC, Gartner, comScore, Pew and other independent research houses. We start at the top with Mobile phones and then work our way deeper in to Smartphones, Platforms and finally Apps. Lets dive straight into it!


Source: Business Insider
The first chart, from BI, shows that smartphone sales are on the rise on a per quarter basis and feature-phone sales are on a decline. Smartphones accounted for the 49% of total mobile phone sales in the first quarter of 2013, coming tantalizingly close to overtaking feature phone sales for the first time ever. It's no surprise that smartphones sales will eventually overtake feature phone sales and do it very soon.  The reason for the growth in smartphone market share over that of feature phone's is not just the increase in smartphone sales but also the shrinking sales of feature phones, which declined 21% y-o-y. A majority of the world's population that owns a phone owns a feature phone so there is plenty of room for growth for smartphones.


Source: Pew Research


The second chart shows the same trend; increase in smartphone ownership and decrease in feature phone ("Other cell phone") ownership. Mind you, this chart is based on a survey of adults in the U.S. rather than on a global research methodology.


Source: Pew Research
So who buys smartphones? In a nutshell, the rich(er) and young(er). Obvious, right? Yes. So lets move on.


Worldwide Mobile Phone Sales to End Users by Vendor in 1Q13 (Thousands of Units)
Company
1Q13
Units
1Q13 Market Share (%)
1Q12
Units
1Q12 Market Share (%)
Samsung
100,657.7
23.6
89,284.6
21.1
Nokia
63,215.2
14.8
83,162.5
19.7
Apple
38,331.8
9.0
33,120.5
7.8
LG Electronics
15,615.8
3.7
14,720.4
3.5
ZTE
14,606.6
3.4
17,379.7
4.1
Huawei Technologies
11,114.8
2.6
10,796.1
2.6
TCL Communication
8,515.9
2.0
7,396.6
1.7
Sony Mobile Communications
7,955.5
1.9
7,898.4
1.9
Lenovo
7,778.9
1.8
5,820.6
1.4
Yulong
7,478.8
1.8
3,146.6
0.7
Others
150,550.6
35.4
150,229.40
35.5
Total
425,821.6
100.0
422,955.4
100.0
Source: Gartner 

Samsung was the numero uno mobile phone (including feature phones) vendor in the mobile phone market where sales nearly touched 426 million units in the first quarter of 2013. A subset of mobile phones, smartphone sales totaled 210 million units in the first quarter of 2013, up a whopping 42.9 percent from the first quarter of 2012! 

Worldwide Smartphone Sales to End Users by Vendor in 1Q13 (Thousands of Units)
Company
1Q13
Units
1Q13 Market Share (%)
1Q12
Units
1Q12 Market Share (%)
Samsung
64,740.0
30.8
40,612.8
27.6
Apple
38,331.8
18.2
33,120.5
22.5
LG Electronics
10,080.4
4.8
4,961.4
3.4
Huawei Technologies
9,334.2
4.4
5,269.6
3.6
ZTE
7,883.3
3.8
4,518.9
3.1
Others
79,676.4
37.9
58,537.0
39.8
Total
210,046.1
100.0
147,020.2
100.0
Source: Gartner 

Samsung wins the war here too with a 31% market share for smartphone sales in 1Q 2013.


It's a different story in the US though...

Top Smartphone OEMs
3 Month Avg. Ending Apr. 2013 vs. 3 Month Avg. Ending Jan. 2013
Total U.S. Smartphone Subscribers Age 13+
Source: comScore MobiLens
Share (%) of Smartphone Subscribers
Jan-13Apr-13Point Change
Total Mobile Subscribers100.0%100.0%N/A
Apple37.8%39.2%1.4
Samsung21.4%22.0%0.6
HTC9.7%8.9%-0.8
Motorola8.6%8.3%-0.3
LG7.0%6.7%-0.3

Apple takes the top spot in the US for smartphone market share in 1Q 2013 followed by Samsung.

However it's a different story in the platform war...

Top Smartphone Platforms
3 Month Avg. Ending Apr. 2013 vs. 3 Month Avg. Ending Jan. 2013
Total U.S. Smartphone Subscribers Age 13+
Source: comScore MobiLens
Share (%) of Smartphone Subscribers
Jan-13Apr-13Point Change
Total Smartphone Subscribers100.0%100.0%N/A
Google52.3%52.0%-0.3
Apple37.8%39.2%1.4
BlackBerry5.9%5.1%-0.8
Microsoft3.1%3.0%-0.1
Symbian0.5%0.5%0.0

Google's mobile platform aka Android, beat out iOS in the US with 52% market share and 74% market share globally. Bye bye Blackberry, with a decreasing market share.

Here's an interested table that spells out the demographic differences  between Android and iOS owner.


Source: Pew Research
Android is more common than iPhone among the young and the poorer (that's putting it blatantly). As you can see smartphone owners who earn more than $75,000/yr are more likely to be iPhone owners than they are Android owners. This is some interesting analysis that offers some insights into the iPhone Vs. Android engagement conundrum.

Let's move deeper into the smartphone ecosystem and talk about App Marketplaces.
Source: Distimo

In Google Play, the only game in the Top 5 Free Apps is Candy Crush Saga, while all the other Apps are Messaging and Voice Apps, with WhatsApp taking the top spot. It seems Android users are concerned with keeping in touch while playing the occasional game on their device. Looking a bit deeper into this analysis, it seems Android users are more cost conscious than their Apple counterparts since Android users seem to use messaging and voice Apps based on TCP/IP, which tends to be an inexpensive alternative to regular voice/sms plans IF bundled appropriately with a data plan and used over WiFi.

Source: Distimo
Moving on to the Top 5 Apple App store Apps, its mainly games! Looks like iPhone users have a lot of time on their hands...hey don't judge! Keep in mind these stats are for the month of May 2013, so this stuff keeps changing. Another point is that critical apps tend to be downloaded first and once when the phone is new. For example, you'd download Google Maps, a very popular app, once and keep it... you wouldn't download it every month. With games, it keeps changing...games are more like fads.
Source: Distimo
In terms of paid apps, Android users seem to prefer productivity apps with the occasional game. 

Source: Distimo
For iPhone users, the top paid app for May 2013 is WhatsApp. Surprising? Not really, because WhatsApp is a paid download on iOS and a free-for-one-year app on Android. So in analyzing app data between platforms we need to keep these idiosyncrasies in mind. And please don't ask me what 'Pou' is, I have no idea!

Distimo, the App analytics company does an awesome job of organizing this data on its interactive Leaderboards. You can slice-n-dice app data by platform, country, free/paid, app category and more. Here's a chart to whet your 'app'etite.




So that about sums up all the Mobile phone related data released last week. Some conclusive trends: iPhone is dominant in the US, Android is growing globally and in the US. iPhone is for the rich. Android is for the young and savvy. And Blackberry is for...uhh...ummm...well here's a picture that sums it up.




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