The world market for mobile devices (personal products with computers almost all running or ARM chips) in Q2 grew by 3.1% to $81.1b in revenues, by 3.2% to 335m in shipments, while the installed base declined by 3.4% to 3.3b, meaning that there is now one device for almost half the world’s population. In the year to the end of June, which is the period shown in the Figures and Table of this paper, total revenues grew by 0.2% to $366b and shipments declined by 0.2% to 1.5b. The installed base for Q2 and the full year are the same of course. You’ll want to know more about this vital market.
Smart phone revenues overtook basic phone revenues at the end of 2013 as we predicted they would (smart phones have graphical screens which can run Internet browsers and apps, differentiating them fro m basic phones). This is a mature market now, with the total number of shipments of all type of product declining slightly from year to year. The ‘flight envelope’ of smart tablets (which run on ARM chips are different to x86 ones which I count as part of the PC market) was smaller than smart phones, as will be that for smart wearables. Audio device shipments have a longer, but narrower, envelope and are declining mainly as a result of Apple’s decision to downgrade its iPod products some time ago. Sales of IoT devices are too small to measure at the moment, but have the potential to ship in large numbers over the next 5 years – and, if they do, their growth will not be restricted as a sub-market of the smart phone market.
Table – Mobile device market shares – revenue ($US billion), unit shipments and installed base (million) – year to end of June 2017
| Revenue ($b) | Share % | Units (m) | Share % | Base (m) | Share % | |
| Apple | $164.2 | 44.9% | 284.1 | 19.4% | 625.6 | 18.8% |
| Samsung | $89.7 | 24.5% | 385.2 | 26.3% | 863.4 | 25.9% |
| Huawei | $19.4 | 5.3% | 140.9 | 9.6% | 282.8 | 8.5% |
| Lenovo* | $8.6 | 2.4% | 54.6 | 3.7% | 190.2 | 5.7% |
| LG | $7.7 | 2.1% | 73.9 | 5.1% | 170.4 | 5.1% |
| Asus | $6.6 | 1.8% | 29.1 | 2.0% | 53.6 | 1.6% |
| ZTE | $5.4 | 1.5% | 72.0 | 4.9% | 142.9 | 4.3% |
| Sony | $3.9 | 1.1% | 14.9 | 1.0% | 49.0 | 1.5% |
| Other | $60.5 | 16.5% | 407.8 | 27.9% | 957.9 | 28.7% |
| Total | $366.1 | 100.0% | 1,462.4 | 100.0% | 3,335.8 | 100.0% |
Notes: *Lenovo includes Mototorla and Google
Source: ITCandor, 2017
Apple is the stand out leader of the mobile device market, holding a 44.9% of revenues and share of 19.4% in shipments and 18.8% in the installed base (its share in these latter 2 areas are smaller because its products are much more expensive than its competitors). In fact Apple is the largest supplier of the ITC market overall mainly on the strengths of its dominance of the smart device area. Over the last few years Apple has managed its transition from expansion into new markets to managing replacement sales very well. Its iOS operating system has also beaten the total of Android-based s device sales – again as I predicted many years ago that it would. Samsung is well positioned in second place, holding 24.5%, 26.3% and 25.9% shares of revenues, shipments and installed base areas respectively. Chinese vendors have made great inroads into this market: between them Huawei, Lenovo and ZTE accounted for a 9.1% share of revenues, 18.3% of shipments and 18.6% of the installed base in the year. The balance between smart and basic phones may not always favour the former in future, since Nokia feature phones are now being manufactured again. Although it may not cost much more to add the capabilities of a smart phone there are still many potential users who don’t want to pay monthly Internet charges when using a mobile phone.
I’ve summarised the market shares of vendors and product types in the Figure, based on the annual spending by users of $366b for the year. As always this paper gives only the top line results of my research at a worldwide level. My data and forecasts cover all product types in over 40 countries, so why not contact me if you need more detail for your business plans or fill in the form below for our brochure and order form:
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