Published in Mobiles

Apple kicks Android to death

by on31 December 2014


Never write a report after an office Christmas party

Industry analyst Chetan Sharma appeared to have had a little too much Christmas happy juice when he turned out a report which claimed that Apple had kicked Android to death this year.

Writing in his blog Sharma claimed that the most notable developments in the mobile market for 2014, was Android makers sudden drop in profits.  This was seized by the Tame Apple Press as a story which claimed that Android had been destroyed by Apple.

Appy-Geek even showed a graph which had Apple with a huge bar of profit, a smaller Samsung one and “others” as a tiny slice. Apple as likely to have taken at least 60 percent of the industry's profits for this year.

If this is true then Android is history and Apple has nearly total control of the smartphone market. The only problem of cause is that it doesn’t. But what Sharma appeared to be saying was that margins had dropped, particularly at the lower end of the market. 

He said that the Android device manufacturer community suffered its "most significant ever" drop in profits during 2014, with earnings having dropped 50 percent from expected levels across 2014.

Even with Samsung generating over $100 billion in sales from phones (including smartphones and feature phones), and Xiaomi becoming the leading OEM in China this year, both companies are seeing limited success as far as revenue goes, due to narrow profit margins.

$100 billion sales for Apple

However Apple generated over $100 billion this year from the sale of iPhones alone.

Appy-Geek also weakened its cause by claiming that Apple was also going to coin it in with its recently announced the Apple Watch, expected to become available next quarter. Total revenue for smartwatches currently is roughly $1.7 billion, with 75 percent of that coming from the US, the online rag enthused.

Last modified on 31 December 2014
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