While Nokia loses market share Apple chases profit share
Techcrunch’s MG Siegler has a piece today on the success of Apple’s iPhone Strategy (See: While Rivals Jockey For Market Share, Apple Bathes In Profits). The detailed post is based in part on Gartner’s quarterly Worldwide Mobile Phone Sales report.
Both reports complement my themes this week on the success of the Apple iPhone and the challenges both Nokia and Google face in dominating the next wave of the Mobile Content convergence so I suggest you take a look at them today.
In the Gartner report we are told that Nokia’s worldwide market share fell by 2.7% to 36.8% in second quarter of 2009 on a year on year basis. At the same time Apple’s market share has risen to 2.5%. So by simple arithmetic it is assumed that Nokia’s loss is Apple’s gain. Obviously that is not the case.
It has taken Apple almost 3 years to reach 2.5% market share. It has taken only a year for Nokia to lose that amount.
The more compelling comparison is in the Smart Phone Market. Here Gartner suggests that Nokia have 45% of the worldwide market share while Apple now has 13.3%. Nokia has lost 2.8% while Apple has gain 2.4%.
Apple is now in the Number 3 position worldwide in the Smart phone market.
The Apple iPhone story continues to prove that the Supply Side Freemium Business Model is a Low Risk/High Return investment strategy that can rapidly build new markets and brands for any Market Leader with a well-loved and respected brand.
As I pointed out in my earlier post this week (See: How Apple dined out on 100,000 free lunches):
With the launch of the iPhone product and the apps store Apple has successfully leverage its brand to convince others to freely contribute their ideas, resources, time, energy and capital to build both a new brand and a new market for them.
By using the Supply Side Freemium Business Model Apple is now a market leader in a space where it wasn’t even on the radar 2 years ago.
The question you should be asking yourself is what have you got in the pipeline that could benefit from applying the Supply Side “Freemium” Investment Strategy to your business today?
Interesting reading can be found at Michael Gartenberg’s Entelligence blog on the future of Nokia http://www.engadget.com/2009/12/01/entelligence-whats-the-future-of-nokia/
The real worry for Nokia is that they just cannot seem to get traction in any market outside of the bread and butter handset business.
Looking at their offerings – Symbian is way long in the tooth, especially when compared with iPhone OS and Android. The Ovi Store and ‘Comes with Music’ ventures seem to be heading the way of N-Gage. Also they’re closing the flagship Regent Street store.
When they try to open up new channels they don’t seem to have much success either. Their latest non-handset offering seems to be an overpriced netbook (the new Nokia Booklet). Hardly innovative.
Have you ever seen an N800 Internet tablet in the wild. Though not.
The contrasts with Apple couldn’t be greater – whose soon to be announced Tablet MID will likely corner the market in the way the iPod already has with numbers and the iPhone has with mindshare.