iPhones Take a Dip in the Smartphone Market

Does it seem possible that Apple has not come out with a new iPhone or iPad in nearly a year? Perhaps this is what has caused Apple’s share of global smartphone shipments to decline this year. The numbers are in for the second quarter 2013 and they are not looking so strong for Apple.

While both Android and Windows Phone came in with slightly higher numbers, Apple dropped to a 13.2 percent share market share for the second quarter. The report comes to us from American market research and analysis firm International Data Corporation (IDC).

Earlier this week IDC produced a report about tablet shipments. According to Ramon Llamas, an IDC analyst, nearly 10 percent fewer tablets of all brands shipped in the second quarter compared to the first, with Apple's iPad line showing the biggest decline with a 25-percent slide.


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Llamas said, "Apple's market share was vulnerable to product launches from the competition. But with a new iPhone and revamped iOS 7 coming out later this year, Apple is well-positioned to recapture market share."

Apple may not have come out with a new product in while, however a lot of other companies have. Samsung unveiled the Galaxy S4 in time to be included in this report. Samsung was the largest of the Android manufacturers. It accounted for 39 percent of all Android smartphones shipped. This means that 73.3 million of the 187.4 million Android smartphones where Samsung devices.

For Android this represented a 73 percent increase over the 108 million shipped in Q2 2012. This, in turn, represents a 10-percent increase from last year, up to 80 percent of the smartphone market share.

Things are not as bad as you would expect for Apple. Total shipments increased by 20 percent to 31.2 million iPhones in the second quarter, over 26 million in the second quarter of 2012. Still, iOS slipped from 16.6 percent of the market a year ago to 13.2 percent.

Overall, if you add all the smartphones regardless of platform, there were 236.4 million units shipped in Q2 2013. This is a major 51 percent increase over the 156 million that were shipped at the same time last year.

All-in-all, it appears that the Windows Phone saw the largest percentage gain of all smartphone shipments for Q2 2013. With a 77.6-percent increase, there were 8.7 million Windows Phone devices, as compared to the 4.9 million that were shipped last year.

Nokia seems to have a lot to do with this. It is another company making an effort to come back from obscurity. It is a company that has gone through a lot of changes and is now trying to come back full circle.

Nokia has introduced two new smartphones that are being sold by many mobile operators around the world. The report shows that Nokia is responsible for about 82 percent of all the Windows Phone shipments. It is beginning to make some major strides to get back strong into the market place. Nokia was my first feature phone in the early 2000s.

It will be interesting to see if as Llamas said that Apple’s release of iOS 7 and a new iPhone (either 5S or 6) will have any effect in the standings. We will have to wait until the fall to see what happens.