Is the gap between Samsung and Apple widening?

Samsung dominates even more of the global smartphone market, probably.

The news:

The latest measurements from Strategy Analytics showed that the Samsung increased its lead over Apple, for the title of the largest smartphone manufacturer. In the fourth quarter of 2015 Samsung made distribution 81,3 millions of devices.

Η Apple announced just last week that it set a sales record, with 74,8 million iPhone devices during the busy holiday shopping season.

The global distributions smartphone increased from the 1.28 billion the 2014 at 1.44 billion the 2015 according to data from the same company. Before you take out the calculators, that's an increase of about 12%.

Η Samsung and the Apple had sales of 317 and 192 million pieces respectively. The top five are completed by Huawei, Lenovo-Moto and Xiaomi. All other companies made a total of 637 million smartphone distributions in 2015.

Η Samsung closed the last quarter of 2015 conquering the 20.1% the market, with a slight increase from 19.6% held at the same time by the 2014. Similarly Apple in the same period the 2015 had a rate of just 18.5%, reduced from 19.6% that achieved the 2014.

The table with the data from Strategy Analytics

Analysis:

"Samsung widens the gap with Apple in the Global Smartphone market"

This was the news that circulated in the tech blogs. Of course most of the writers wanted to close their texts with the favorite topic of eschatology, the end of Apple.

Yes, according to the statistics presented by strategy analytics, Samsung increased its lead over Apple for the 4th quarter of 2015but I have two objections.

Initially I see in "Global Smartphone Vendor Market Share", that Samsung in 2014 held a share of 24,7 %, while in 2015 it fell to 22,2%. Similarly, Apple from 15% The 2014 arrived at 16.1% The 2015.

Is the gap finally opening or closing? Indeed, if one is only interested in the statistics for the most recent quarter, the gap seems to be widening. But in the case of Apple, which releases new devices only once a year, wouldn't it be more fair to compare it to the total sales of each year?

The evidence does indeed have a value. They show what we all see, the iPhone 6 was a great success and continued to offer sales throughout 2015. iPhone 6s although it was successful, it did not offer a large increase in the number of sales. In fact, in the first financial quarter of 2016 Apple for the first time announced that sales growth was the lowest seen since the launch of the iPhone in 2007.

This doesn't mean that the iPhone 6s doesn't make a significant number of sales, it just means that it makes comparable sales to the iPhone 6. Apple is expected to release a new device with a 4" inch screen soon to boost sales.

Apple's sales rate for the 2015 increased by 7% from the 2014, while Samsung in the same period had a decline of 10%.

The last observation is that the strategy analytics does not use data directly from Samsung, but is the result of its own research.

The elements of the Samsung concerning the number of distributions, to mobile phone companies and retailers, no one can know how many of these devices were actually sold. The data of Apple form sales number and not an estimate for iPhone distributions.

So, if you see similar statistics and analyses somewhere, check the sources used by the company and accept the analysts' conclusions. "with a pinch of salt".

from jericho