Apple has surpassed Nokia and Samsung to become the smartphone king. It was previously estimated that Samsung could be the new smartphone king. Samsung has missed out to Apple by a whisker. Apple has shipped 20.3 million units in Q2 2011 and Samsung has shipped 19.2 million units. Damn it! Sammy. What happened? Fell short by 1.1 million units?
The sorry story of Q2 shipments isn’t Samsung, but Nokia. With 16.7 million smartphones shipped, Nokia has occupied the third position behind Apple and Samsung. A place which Nokia hasn’t seen before but should start getting comfortable with. Nokia still is the number one mobile phone maker and has shipped 88.5 million units. Samsung with 70.2 million units is a close second. LG, Apple and ZTE make it to the top 5 mobile phone vendors list.
The next quarter shipments are almost predictable. Apple will be releasing its iPhone 5 just in time and Samsung can sell a whole lot of Galaxy’s but it will be no match to iPhone. Samsung’s real chance was this quarter.
If there is a moral to this mobile phone story, then it is this : Do one thing and do it well.
Apple, ever since it started selling phones, has sold just one phone. It has kept its strategy and production line simple. It never had multiple variants of the same thing, like HTC. May be that’s something the mobile phone vendors can’t ignore too long.