Tectonic shifts among the tech giants…
Miguel Heft says The iPhone Has a Real Fight on Its Hands:
Phones powered by Google’s Android operating system are now the most popular among smartphones in the United States, according to new data released by Nielsen.
In the six months ending August 10, Android phones accounted for 32 percent of the smartphones sold, Nielsen said. By comparison, iPhones accounted for 25 percent of devices sold and BlackBerry handsets for 26 percent. A month earlier, the three types of devices were in a virtual dead heat.
Of course, Google’s gain is not necessarily Apple’s loss, at least not yet. Apple sold more than 3 million iPhone 4s in the four weeks after the device went on sale. More recently, Apple has said that customers have activated a total of 120 million iOS devices, which includes all iPhone models, as well the iPod Touch and the iPad.
Apple’s crying all the way to the bank:
Apple’s iPad sold three million units in the first 80 days after its April release and its current sales rate is about 4.5 million units per quarter, according to Bernstein Research. This sales rate is blowing past the one million units the iPhone sold in its first quarter and the 350,000 units sold in the first year by the DVD player, the most quickly adopted non-phone electronic product… At this current rate, the iPad will pass gaming hardware and the cellular phone to become the 4th biggest consumer electronics category with estimated sales of more than $9 billion in the U.S. next year, according to Bernstein. TVs, smart phones and notebook PCs are the current three largest categories.
And what of Microsoft?
Microsoft’s Internet Explorer (IE) browser has fallen below 50% of the worldwide market for the first time according to StatCounter. The company’s research arm, StatCounter Global Stats finds that Microsoft IE fell to 49.87% in September followed by Firefox with 31.5%. Google’s Chrome continues to increase market share at an impressive rate and has more than tripled from 3.69% in September 2009 to 11.54% in September this year.
A Microsoft tablet by Christmas? Who cares! Microsoft really doesn’t get it. And customers know it, “I already have a crappy computer… I don’t need a crappy tablet.”
The iPad’s lead is overwhelming :
“We believe Apple’s lead in the tablet market will prove difficult to close by the onslaught of competing products coming over the next several quarters,” he writes in a note to clients issued early Monday. “Ultimately, we expect the slew of upcoming competition to fall flat from a user experience standpoint while struggl[ing] to materially undercut the iPad on price.”
That’s Deutsche Bank’s Chris Whitmore. He details Apple’s lead:
- 12-18 months in content
- 2 or more years in terms of other media acquisition and integration via iTunes
- Untold dollars in terms of component pricing
The iPad is cannibalizing PC sales, too. Go ahead, call me an Apple fan boy! After years of complaining that Apple is not this, that or the other I finally came to my senses and realized that the reason the company has a valuation approaching Exxon Mobil’s and the reason they hold the commanding lead they do is because they make great products that consumers like and that prove to be good values.
Word that Apple may be trying to hire a blogger didn’t sway me at all.
How are they going to keep that first-mover advantage? Apple TV, on sale now.