BRAKES, BRAKES, BRAKES!
Some news outlets are now reporting that Apple iPhone is number one! Just after I said that Android was rapidly gaining market share and was the largest smartphone market segment. But that is all wrong, right?
Nope.
Sorry, Apple fanboys.
Apple isn’t really number one in terms of market segment, number of end users, or almost anything else. They are however, number one as a company, for smartphone revenue. Which is a factor that matters only if you are investing, and not so much if you are an end user or a business who is concerned about their website being mobile ready.
How is the revenue number generated? Its based on estimated total sales volume from a wholesale cost. So Apple has an estimated $11.4 billion dollars in revenue to Nokia’s $9.5 billion. That is a big difference to be sure, but when you consider that Apple’s average handset price is over $600.00 (wholesale) and Nokia is just under $90, then you realize that Nokia is still shipping a heck of a lot of handsets compared to Apple.
And in the long run, Apple still lags behind Android as having a large portion of market share. The latest estimates put Apple at around 16 to 18% market share (showing growth), compared to Androids 35% or so. Keep in mind that Apple has been pushing iPhones for a while longer and the unit cost, and you probably will see Android continue to grow in market share. Obviously, Android doesn’t get to claim the revenue numbers that Apple does since Android is an open source platform and not one dedicated OS and manufacturer. It would be interesting to see what the numbers look liked if you added up all Android handset manufacturers for revenue. I wonder if Apple would still be ahead.
In the end, keep in mind that Apple is growing at solid pace, but not as quickly as Android. Android has been chewing up the charts and market segments much more quickly then Apple and represents a larger portion of new smartphone users then does Apple.
Obviously, when we are designing websites we have to take into account the different phones that might be used to reach those new websites, so our designs have to differ from one handset to another, especially since Apple still isn’t supporting Flash (which it has no reason for doing other then being a bit of a corporate asshole).
In the end, our ecommerce websites and corporate website designs have to focus more on the largest market segment so the priority remains Android smartphones.
