Oh my. This can’t be what Redmond had planned. But I guess they should have spent more time revising their platform during the years and years they dominated the smartphone field. Now, with the triple threat of consumer-accessible Blackberry devices, cheap iPhones, and legions of Android handsets, it seems that even WinMo 7 may be too little, too late. iPhone users now outnumber WinMo users, according to a recent ComScore survey.
The growth of the iPhone and, more importantly, the stagnation of WinMo sales and devices, had to lead here eventually. It was just a matter of when, and apparently “when” was sometime before October, when the data from the survey was collected.
What’s next? Well, Blackberry and Apple will have to fend off Android, which will be arming the vast featurephone population with cheap, capable devices. That’s still a ways off, but Google has momentum on its side. Should be an interesting year.
Wait a second, what’s with the Symbian population going up?! Gross!
[via Electronista]
Looking at your graph, Palm’s U.S. smartphone market share is more than double of Google’s.
Why Palm didn’t actually deserve a mention in your post, at least a little one??
Because I think Palm is on its way out and Google is a serious contender.
That’s expected. The stats will be some how be totally different or can out of imagination because Android will be the game changer next year.
Palm and Microsoft will sink deep.
It appears that WinMo is definitely a dying platform. By the time WinMo 7 hits the streets in late 2010 Microsoft will have to start from a user base of zero. Even HTC will be long gone (well, maybe they’ll make room for one WinMo 7 handset).
Steve Ballmer is going to have a lot of explaining to do to investors and the news media about what exactly went wrong with the mobile plan he liked so much.
I love how Windows Mobile was unanimously considered a complete and rather pathetic failure, which never really caught on with consumers in the mobile market, until the iPhone became the “best selling device ever” with less market penetration. Now that the iPhone is arguably doing slightly better than WinMo, suddenly WinMo goes from being a joke of a mobile OS, only used by nerds and IT mangers, to the OS that “dominated” the smartphone industry.
It is truly amazing the lengths people will go to in order to perpetuate the Apple mythology.
Windows Mobile was always a joke, even before Apple got into the cell phone business.
I don’t think I’m perpetuating anything. Windows Mobile has been around for a long time and was a big success worldwide. It’s a significant milestone for a relative newcomer to pass it up in active devices.
But it wasn’t really a big success, ever. It has always been a disappointing underperformer, and the press has treated it as such, right up until the iPhone redefined (downward) what “fabulous success” meant in the mobile market. Before the iPhone was “dominating the industry” with 10 million units sold its first full year on the market, 10 million units was considered a sad niche device that hardly anyone used. It was fewer phones than Motorola sold in one model, in one month. The entire history of Windows Mobile, it was considered a halfhearted attempt that never really caught on with the mass market.
I’ll go as far as to say I defy you to find a single article (from anything but a dedicated WinMo fan site) that ever talked about how Windows Mobile was redefining the mobile industry, or putting pressure on traditional phone manufacturers, or any of the other breathless praise heaped on the hip device of the day. Before the iPhone, BlackBerry was the one getting all the press as the hot new device, and before that it was the Treo. WinMo has always been an also-ran. No one ever asked what would be the next big “WinMo killer.” In fact, I think that if one adjective had to sum up the entire history of WinMo, it would be “disappointing.”
It is only in eulogy that suddenly WinMo becomes some unstoppable force that it is impressive to overcome.
Lee Lloyd, nice phony picture/comment by marketing people … Microsoft is consistently 2-3 years behind the curve. When they are out in front … it’s clunky and ugly
You really aren’t very good at reading comprehension, are you? Yes, as I said, WinMo is a joke and a flop, always has been. That is exactly why I find it so hilarious that Macheads have to build it up in order to pretend it is such a big accomplishment to knock it down!
Lee:
The mythology with Apple TODAY vs YESTERDAY year is that Apple has successfully transformed an entire industry that was running sideways for so long by ignoring the consumer.
You can’t be that angry (especially over Apple) when it is quite clear that the statistics don’t like – developers ARE making money (finally), app downloads are massive, and the UI is so compelling on this device that my own MOM, who never could touch a computer out of fear, has figured it out and is PLAYING GAMES on the damn thing.
Apple can make mistakes. The point here is that Apple has transformed the focus and direction of an industry in a mere short period of time when others were bumbling along doing screw all with their handsets. Devices were so complex with UI and navigation that they simply became the swiss army knives of features vs. true functionality.
Nuff Said. Relax, take a breath and enjoy the holidays – you sound too angry.
Really? So how’s that 64 bit OS treating you, homes?
Actually, the iPhone left Windows Mobile’s markshare in the dust long before October this year.
According to Gartner, back in Q4 2008 the iPhone captured 14% of the worldwide smartphone market while Windows Mobile plummeted to 9%.
When you look at it from a platform basis, there are now around 60 million iPhone OS devices (iPod Touch & iPhone) out there.
WinMo has been on a steep decline for a while now and v6.5 has only accelerated the pace. With WinMo v7 delayed to late 2010 and all the major WinMo licensees deserting the platform for Android, you’d be a mug to invest in the platform now.
-Mart
Oh God. Put the kool aid down for a moment.
First of all this is about active devices. That’s devices that are being used, not ones that have been bought to replace last year’s models. Apple have indeed been beating WinMo in sales, they have not been beating them in usage until now – if they actually are globally that is.
Secondly, stop going on about ‘iPhone OS’ devices because it simply doesn’t matter. This is about phones – you know devices that you use to call people – so the fact it also runs on PMPs is completely irrelevant because it’s a diffferent market segment (those people with iPod Touches are probably using another type of phone, be it a Blackberry, Nokia or other).
So quoting ’60 million’ means nothing because you’re not comparing like with like. Given that there appear to be 9 million active iPhone users in the US and the US accounts for half of all iPhone sales it follows that there are about 20,000,000 active iPhone users out there. The other 10,000,000 or so iPhones would seem to be languishing in sock drawers throughout the world.
20 million is good. It’s a lot of phones but it’s buttons compared to the number of Nokia smartphone users, considerably less than the number of Blackberry users and probably about equal to the number of WinMo users.
If you’ve got anything to disprove that feel free to post it.
Mark, you are right that the Commscore figures refer to US installed base not sales marketshare as implied. The article and graph are misleading in that regard.
However, I disagree with your statement that the total iPhone OS figures are irrelevant. We are talking operating systems here – Windows Mobile OS versus iPhone OS – not hardware after all and while the smartphone segment is important, it would be a case of ignoring the elephant in the room if the app-weilding, mobile browsing, wifi-equipped iPod Touch was ignored.
The phone part has become more and more irrelevant now as the mobile platform has come to the fore as evidenced by the avalanche of app availability and use and mobile browser use. VoIP and MiFi use further blur the boundaries.
As for comparing with the Blackberry OS, at 60 million iPhone OS devices, in 3 years Apple has already caught up with RIm who had only sold 50 million Blackberry devices in the 10 years up to the start of 2009 – RIM only counts 28 million current active subscribers. Symbian smartphone market share worldwide is certainly still larger but shrinking rapidly every year, so nothing to crow about there.
Enough of the “cool aid” insults – how about some hard figures?
And your premise that 10 million iPhones are sitting “languishing in sock drawers”? Do you really believe that?
-Mart
So let me get this straight, you are perfectly willing to believe that of 50 million Blackberries sold (by the way, that number is from Feb of 2009, and at around 8 million Blackberries sold a quarter this year, is now much more like 70 million), there are only 28 million active users, but you think that every single iPhone and iPod Touch ever sold MUST be counted as an active device? You are either extremely hypocritical, or you haven’t thought this out.
In my experience, I have yet to meet a single iPhone user who has never owned another iPhone or iPod Touch. In fact, almost without fail, every iPhone user I have ever met bought an iPod Touch first, then got the iPhone, then upgraded their iPhone. That is 3 devices per one user, assuming that they didn’t have any device failures that caused them to have to get a warranty replacement. In reality, just about every iPhone user I have ever talked to about the subject has actually had 4 “iPhone OS devices” because they have had at least one of those three devices crap out on them at some point. That would put your 60 million devices sold at around 15 million actual purchasers, then if you assume you assume a third of those people unloaded a device via second hand sales, gets you right up around that 20 million users.
It doesn’t seem at all unreasonable to me, since at least where I live, I can’t remember the last time I saw someone pull out a first-gen iPhone, nor can I remember ever seeing someone continue to use their iPod Touch after buying an iPhone.
No, what I said was that RIM has gone on the record to state that as of May 30th 2009, there were 28.5 million Blackberry subscribers. As of their most recent Sept quarter, I notice they only added an extra 3.8 million extra subscribers which is a pretty strong indication that all 50 (or 70) million RIM devices are not still in use.
Do you really want to argue that ancient 10 year old RIM devices are still in use in 2009? Considering the usual corporate policy of 2-3 year leases and turn-over of computing equipment and the overwhelming business use of RIM devices, your supposition is quite unbelievable.
This is very different to the millions of less than 3 year old iPhones and iPod touches that can all still run the latest iPhone OS.
And I’m sorry, but to argue that a significant number of expensive $5-600 first generation iPhones and millions of iPhone 3G’s have not been sold or passed on to family members/friends defies logic.
-Mart
I am not debating the number of active Blackberry subscribers. That sound about right. What you don’t seem to understand, is that the overwhelming majority of RIM’s unit sales have been over the past 3 years. Of those 50 million quoted in Feb, fewer than 10 million were older than 2007 models. RIM is selling more units in a quarter than they used to sell in several years combined. There were only a couple hundred thousand of those “ancient 10 year-old Blackberries ever sold, which hardly makes a dent in the 22 million gap between active subscribers and devices sold.
It isn’t just Blackberries either. Mobile phones (and portable media players for that matter), are disposable devices. People get a new one when the new model comes out, and they just chuck their old one. Apple is no different than any other company in this regard. There is no huge market of people looking to make a big return from their 3 year-old phone, no matter who the manufacturer might be. Most people upgrade their phone as often as their contract will allow, and never give a second’s thought to what will happen to their old phone.
The idea that people just chuck their iPhone when the new model comes out might offend your delicate Apple-loving sensibilities, but there is absolutely nothing illogical about it. That is what people do with old phones when they get a new one. What is really illogical is your insistence that people are dearly holding on to, or passing down, a phone they could pick up on ebay for less than $40. You are being disingenuous to even pretend you don’t know this. It is only in some irrational exuberance to overly inflate the install base of a beloved brand that someone would even try to suggest that a 3-year-old phone would be lovingly handed down from generation to generation as some beloved heirloom.
Martin, you’re flat out wrong.
The iPod Touch is irrelevant when we’re talking about phones because it doesn’t make phone calls or text and those remain the primary reasons for buying a mobile phone. If you think it isn’t then ask yourself how many iPhones would sell if it couldn’t make calls.
It really is as simple as that. The only people confusing the issue are Apple and some bloggers who really should know better.
Your point about RIM’s sales and current subscribers is exactly the point about the iPhone. The iPhone – in all its variations and models – has sold a bit over 30 million devices. About 20 million seem current therefore – using exactly the same logic that you’re using about RIM – approximately 10 million are no longer in use. That’s the whole point of the graph.
As for Symbian, it’s doing nothing in the US and never really has. However, in the rest of the world it’s holding strong or improving its position. I’ve pointed this out in other articles but it’s worth doing again: Nokia’s increase in smartphone sales in Q2 2009 was greater than the total number of iPhones sold outside the US. You may want to actually look at the stats – particularly the regional ones – before falling for the, again, stupid line that Nokia and Symbian are dead.
Those are your hard figures – Canalsys, IDC and Gartner’s smartphone sales, Nokia’s results, Apple’s results, this survey which shows the active usage. The inferences can all be made from these if one chooses to actually read them and not blindly swallow the nonsense spewed by some companies and their adherents.
Oh, and in case you hadn’t heard Martin, new figures out today that it is 75 million Blackberries sold in total, with 10 million of those being just last quarter.
Lee, valid point about the increased rate of Blackberry sales in the last year or two so the growth isn’t purely linear but the fact remains that the Blackberry has taken far longer to reach this level and the iPhone is rapidly shrinking the gap – with most recent data indicating Apple has sold 10 million iPhones alone this quarter as well. Add in around 7 million iPod Touches and the Blackberry OS is well and truly eclipsed.
Oh and in case you hadn’t heard the latest figures – Piper Jaffray put the total iPhone OS base at 78 million, so looks like the iPhone OS mobile platform has actually overtaken RIM this quarter.
However, what you don’t seem to understand is that the iPhone is not the same as cheap dumb-phones that people get for free on a 1 or 2 year contract and chuck out without a moment’s thought.
Likewise business users do turn over their Blackberries at a fast rate hence the low subscriber numbers vs total units sold.
However, the vast majority of iPhones particularly in the first couple of years were to consumers who would not chuck out their old iPhone or iPod Touch.
The going rates for original iPhone 3G’s are still up around the $300-$400 mark on eBay and original 2G iPhones for $200-$300 and since you’re mentioning personal experiences, every single owner of older iPhone models in my acquaintance who upgraded sold their old phones on eBay or passed them on the family or friends.
-Mart
@Mark A
I’m sorry but we do know how many iPhones would sell if they didn’t make calls – about 7 million per quarter – as we already have an iPhone sans cellular radio namely the iPod Touch and sales are going gang-busters.
As I said, we are comparing Operating system platforms here – Windows Mobile, Blackberry OS and iPhone OS, not individual devices like the HTC Magic or the Blackberry Bold or the iPhone 3G.
If we were talking only about voice, we’d be talking about the overall dumb phone market, but we’re not – the thing that makes smartphones different is web browsing and apps.
You are stuck in old-world thinking, it’s not just about the phone any more. Haven’t you read the latest projections from multiple analysts out there? The mobile internet and app platform will be twice as big as the desktop in only 2-3 years.
iPhone users are now spending a much larger proportion of their time using apps on their devices and browsing the web than they make calls.
From a developer perspective the total number of iPhone OS devices is absolutely relevant and from the consumer perspective, the option is vital as it gives them access to this new mobile platform without being chained to the carriers.
You ignore the importance of the mobile app/internet platform at your peril.
-Mart
Martin, a few things.
1: Upon launch of the original iPhone, Piper Jaffray predicted there would be a 240 million user base for the iPhone in the second year, so you will forgive me if I don’t believe that number.
2: What Apple claims they sold, unlike RIM’s numbers, don’t match with what independent studies like Gartner claim they sold (2 million fewer units). Given that Apple has a long pattern of questionable PR, you will forgive me if I go with the independent numbers.
3: I don’t know what you are talking about on ebay prices. There are plenty of original iPhones available there for far less than $100. I think you confuse what people are asking, with what people are paying.
4: 80% of RIM’s sales are to consumers, not businesses. If you are really going to continue this argument, please update your talking point from 2005. More than 50% of RIM’s revenue has come from consumer devices since the release of the Pearl, and these days business sales are a very small part of their total sales.
5: Quit fooling yourself. The iPhone is no different than any other phone in it’s price point (which by the way is around $99 these days), which puts it right there with those “cheap dumb-phones.” If people chuck their $300 BlackBerry, and their $500 HTC, then it is nothing but a fanboy fantasy that they would never part with their precious $99 iPhone. I know to you small vocal iPhone fanatics, it is some precious piece of art that you will frame and name your next child after, but I know plenty of people (3 just this week) who jumped from the iPhone to the Droid without a second’s though, because that is the hot new phone. The service early termination fee gave them much more concern that the worth of their precious iPhone, and all the dropped calls made that termination fee easy to bear.
Martin, I’m not stuck in ‘old world thinking’ at all. A smartphone is a device that allows browsing, app installation… and makes calls. That’s still its primary function. If it can’t do that then it’s not a smartphone, it’s a PMP with bells on.
Neither do I ignore the mobile platform, I just don’t think Apple has a chance in hell of dominating the market because they’re not going mass market in the low and mid tier like Nokia and others are.
@Lee,
Piper Jaffray did not predict 240 million iPhones in 2009 – where did you pull that figure from? Way back in 2007 they predicted 45 million which is certainly higher than the actual figure which looks to be around 26 million iPhones in 2009 (although it’s not a bad prediction of the total number of iPhone OS devices in 2009) – and not too shabby considering they made that prediction over 2 years ago.
http://www.appleinsider.com/articles/07/10/25/piper_jaffray_ups_apple_target_to_250_sees_sales_of_45m_iphones_in_09.html
The 10 million estimate for the current quarter is not from Piper Jaffray or Apple, but from a number of other analysts and considering the last quarter came in at 7.4 million and all indications point to 3GS sales having surged this quarter, that is not at all unlikely. Considering Apple is bound by SEC regulations to report accurate figures in their quarterly results, I don’t know how you can doubt them?
So, what we end up with is the fact that not only has the iPhone by itself now passed the installed base of all Windows Mobile manufacturers combined, but it also look like this quarter they will have sold around the same number of smartphones worldwide as RIM. Also, we now know that more iPhone OS devices have been sold in the last 2 and a half years than all Blackberry 2-way pagers and smartphones sold in the past 10 years.
Let’s just restate that for clarity: 78 million iPhone OS devices sold in 2.5 years vs 75 million Blackberry devices sold in 10 years. Pretty amazing whatever way you look at it.
-Mart
First off Martin, Apple is not in any way shape or form required to report any unit sales figures (accurate or otherwise) by the SEC. They are required to report accurate revenue information, by they get to choose how they break that down. Secondly, Apple has a long history of counting every product shipped to a store, shipped to a distributor, or shipped as a service replacement as a unit “sold.” They even count sales of refurbished units as a unit sold. That is all well and good from a revenue perspective, because they were paid for all those units, but it does not even come close to representing a user per sale. There is no way you can come to anything approaching an honest count of users based on unit sales, when display models, inventory backstock, replacement units, and review units are all counted in that total.
Next, I love how your number is going up by tens of millions every day. There are 60 million, no wait there are 78 million, next you will probably claim there are 100 million by the end of next week, and of course every one of those should count as an active user for a couple of generations, because it is completely irrational to think that any iPhone or iPod would ever fall into disuse or stop working, ever.
Look, when it comes down to it, you can massage the numbers however you want to in order to fuel your juvenile fantasies of being on the winning team, but the reality is, a PDA (which is all the iPod Touch really is) is a completely different market segment than a smartphone. The fact that they run the same OS is really just as irrelevant with Apple as it was back when Palm and Compaq/HP were selling both smartphones and PDAs running common OS’s. Going down that road, is like counting PS3s as Linux machines, to artificially inflate the number of computers running Linux.
Like it or not, no matter how you massage the numbers, Blackberries are still both outselling iPhones, and seeing more market growth than iPhones, and Nokia is still selling 10x as many smartphones as Apple. You can be “amazed” all you want that the iPhone is selling better than a failing joke of a mobile OS that hasn’t seen a major improvement in at least 3 years, but it really isn’t an amazing feat at all. I am more surprised that Palm’s WebOS ISN’T outselling Windows Mobile, than I am that anything IS.
Hmm, for some reason my last comment hasn’t appeared. Here it is again:
@Lee,
So Apple pushes unsold inventory on resellers to inflate their sales numbers do they? Ah so that would explain the continuous shortages of iPhones at those very same resellers across the world – Not! Here in Australia for example several Carriers had rolling out-of-stock notices on their websites for months after the launch of the iPhone 3GS. My sister-in-law couldn’t a 3GS for weeks thanks to the high demand.
I’m sorry, it is companies like Microsoft who are renowned for channel stuffing. Their infamous foisting of mountains of Xbox 360s on retailers in order to claim 10 million sold back in q4 2006 was followed by a similar situation with Zunes in 2007. The trouble with these strategies is that the following quarter in each case was a disaster with an enormous glut and plummeting sales figures. That sort of thing is so obviously not how Apple has been operating.
You’re also completely ignoring all of the independent estimations of unit sales from analysts across the board which all confirm Apple’s iPhone numbers.
As far as your assertion that I am making up new numbers each time – the total iPhone OS sales estimate of 78 million was only published by Piper Jaffray in the last day or so, just like RIM’s financial results. I take it you don’t want us updating the figures we are referring to as they become available? *shakes head*
I’m sorry Lee but your outrageous 240 million unit slur on Piper Jaffray amongst other things has rather tarnished your credibility and it is getting hard to take your arguments seriously.
For example comparing counting all iPhone OS devices to counting PS3’s as Linux machines is so ludicrous to almost not deserve comment, but I guess I am a sucker for a weak argument. We’re talking the very same OS running on the iPhone and iTouch – total binary compatibility, same GUI, same online App store and media stores, almost exactly the same hardware.
In the case of counting Palm or Compaq PDAs & phones that ran the same apps – it would certainly have been sensible when comparing operating systems – how else could we all know exactly how large their respective operating system installed bases were otherwise?
Again, we are talking mobile operating systems – Windows Mobile, Blackberry and iPhone OS – and need to count all devices that run those OSes if we’re going to have a clear picture of just how large these platforms actually are. Even your own figure of 75 million total Blackberry sales in the last 10 years includes more than just phones as from 1999 to 2002 Blackberry only made two-way pagers not smartphones.
Anyway, I should probably stop now as you obviously prefer to sling insults rather than present facts. Thanks anyway, it has been fun. :-)
-Mart
The numbers look to me like WinMo hasn’t lost any ground which considering the anemic update that was 6.5, delayed WinMo 7 and their current PR problem seems pretty remarkable. Given the increase in total number it look like the iPhone has gained people who are switching from feature phones to smart phones so in essence these are users who are looking for simple, non business features and the coolness factor which we would all agree is iPhones forte’.
If anything MS should be concerned about RIM’s increase in share because they are more of a direct competitor to WinMo’s feature set for business users.
It will be interesting to see what happens when the new smart-phone users start learning about the limitations of the iPhone: multitasking, teathering, etc.., if they will choose differently on their next contract or stay with Apple.
Please please please redo the graph. The month should be the x axis, # active users should be the y axis and the different vendors should be the colors. The current graph is very confusing.
If the smartphone market continues growing like that, everyone in the US will have a smartphone by 2015!!
What a great topic.
Comparing smartphones is fun and always creates interesting arguments:
http://mobilespoon.blogspot.com/2009/11/iphone-vs-android-vs-winmo-vs-webos-vs.html
For me the iPhone still wins in most categories but I’m sensing a slow down in Apple’s innovation while all the others are simply doing pretty much the same stuff now and sometimes with better screens and hardware…
Regarding the Windows Mobile – the author is right, they should have seen it coming. 10 years and it’s all pretty much the same. The only thing that can stop the downfall (actually not stop, slow it down a bit) is devices like HTC HD2 (http://mobilespoon.blogspot.com/2009/12/one-night-stand-with-htc-hd2.html) It’s a brilliant piece of phone and except for some limping WinMo settings screen it’s even user friendly!
It’s amazing that some people find it hard to accept that a newcomer to the phone business is the leader in this space. When the iPhone came out other handset manufacturers, analysts, and techies were saying it was a niche product and that the touchscreen was a gimmick that users wouldn’t like, then all of a sudden, Motorola, RIM, Samsung, Nokia, etc., you name it, they are all rushing touch screen phones to market. When the App Store was introduced many critics and competitors said Apple was ripping off developers by taking 30% off the top and developers wouldn’t fall for it, now everyone is rushing to put up their app stores too after seeing Apple’s success, RIM, Android, Palm, Nokia, etc. Strange that these companies that have been selling mobile phones for the last 10 – 30 years are only now introducing these features after Apple’s iPhone came out less than 3 years ago. Apple’s record profits every quarter for the last 3 years (as Motorola, Sony Ericsson, Nokia are busy losing money by the barrel – Nokia had its first loss in 10 years last quarter) and Apple’s $40 billion in the bank are more than enough to tell the story. I traded in my BB for an iPhone and in the 2 years I had my BB I don’t think I surfed the web more than 10 times (basically about 2 days worth of iPhone Web use). When Apple said it wished to sell 10 million phones a year it was ridiculed and its competitors laughed. Now that it will probably sell between 40 – 50 million iPhones this year (it’s currently doing about 8-9 million per quarter) the competitors aren’t laughing any more.