With the year 2012 coming to a close, the smartphone market has seen a lot of contenders striving for dominance in terms of market share and mind share. The current two leading titans, Samsung and Apple, have shared incredible dominance in the market, having nearly wiped out all other competition to obscurity in the last few years. However, with the year 2013 rapidly approaching, analysts have seen the rise and decline of several formerly well-known brands of smartphones and predict that Samsung and Apple may have to budge in and let other smaller companies take a bigger piece of market share.
Samsung, the first of the two biggest leaders in the smartphone market, has seen incredible success through sales of its top-selling Galaxy S II and III. According to Canalys, Samsung has top position this quarter, having sold nearly 55.5 million units. With a whopping $47.6 billion in sales and increased revenue of an additional 26%, Samsung pushed up its global market share from 22% to 32% and even broke its own personal all-time record for handset shipments, having made nearly twice its profit in the third year. Carolina Milanesi, research VP of consumer devices at Gartner, posits that Samsung’s success can be attributed to Galaxy’s remarkable brand recognition, with Galaxy being a more recognized brand name than Samsung itself.
Apple, Samsung’s biggest rival and the second of two biggest leaders in the smartphone market, has also established itself even more this fiscal. The Cupertino, California based company took the second position this quarter, having sold nearly 26.9 million iPhone units and seen a tremendous growth in shipments by approximately 57.6% this year. Apple’s units used to be exclusively available on carrier AT&T and that tilted some of the market towards Android-run phones for its diversity of carriers and cheaper market rates. However, Apple has diversified to more carriers and offered its users iPhone models like the 4S for subsidized prices, opening a wider variety of choices for consumers to opt for.
Aside from these two titans, a lot of other little-league and former-glory smartphone companies are clawing their way up the market. Sony, the third largest vendor, has sold 8.8 million units worldwide but its market share is considerably low, at less than 0.5%. Its Ericsson line saw great success in Europe but the lack of CDMA limited its success in the US, having been confined to carriers GSM carriers like AT&T and T-Mobile.
LG, surprisingly, has also seen a 70% boost due to its fast response time to the rising demand for LTE-capable handsets, but its market share has dropped from 4.8% to 3.3%. Companies like HTC and RIM may also be suffering, having seen drops of 36% and 38.4% in respective earnings. While RIM may not be able to regain its lost customer base in the US, other smaller companies have shown potential this year. The rising popularity and potential of the underdog, Microsoft’s Windows Phone 8, also presents a great deal of speculation as to whether it will be able to challenge the top two tech titans, creating an interesting trifecta of arch rivalries.
