iPhone #2 in the USA?

By Dieter Bohn
Posted on December 17, 2007 8:45 AM
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So on Friday afternoon, Mike over at our iPhone Blog stumbled across this primo piece of linkbait over at Roughly Drafted. It's not good news:

In its first full quarter of sales, the iPhone has already climbed past Microsoft’s entire lineup of Windows Mobile smartphones in North America, according to figures compiled by Canalys and published by Symbian.

Ok: some context. You can't get Canalys' number's without paying a lot of money, so instead what many folks do is find some sucker who's willing to pay for those numbers and publish them. Symbian is often that rube, and so we have the numbers and they show something startling: in one quarter (maybe two, we're working secondhand here), the iPhone had garnered 27% of US marketshare in the smartphone category. Ouch.

Now we're going on record saying that we're not believing the numbers 100%, but we can't tell if the fishy smell of the numbers is coming from the fact that the report is fishy or the fact that we're living in De Nile. It might be the denial thing, since we've already seen numbers claiming that the internet sees more Mobile Safari users than it does PocketIE users.

So now what? Well, like Morning Paper (thanks for the link, there, pals!), we're taking the news philosophically. Well, philosophically with a side of “we don't believe it yet.” Look at the bright side - if it's true, we're suddenly rootin' for the underdogs, which is more fun and more gratifying. Plus: it looks like the platform that lost the most to the iPhone is the PalmOS. We're not saying, we're just saying.

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Comments (40)

Actually those numbers are pretty suspect, and does not agree with Canalys's last published data, from Q4 2006.

http://www.canalys.com/pr/2007/r2007024.htm

For example, according the Canalys in Q4 2006 Nokia shipped 11 million smartphones world wide, while the worldwide graph for Q4 2006 shows Nokia shipping about 14.5 million (probably because its a presentation for Nokia marketing).
(edit: Oops, forgot Nokia<>Symbian)

At the same time, according to the table, RIMM shipped 1.8 million smartphones in Q4 2006, but according the the graph they only shipped about 800 000.
Edit: This still stands

Another example is that RIMM said they shipped 3 million blackberry's in Q3 2007 (quarter ending September 2007) when the world wide graph only indicated 2 million.
This still stands

They are probably playing fast and loose with their definition of what a smartphone is, like in past presentations where they only looked at "mid-range smartphones", ignoring the PDA phones which form the predominate part of the Windows Mobile market share.

Surur

Posted by surur | December 17, 2007 10:04 AM

Looks like the number correspond to me. I think you are not paying attention to the chart's titles that you reference. I see no discrepancies".

Posted by archie | December 17, 2007 11:23 AM

Looks like the number correspond to me. I think you are not paying attention to the chart's titles that you reference. I see no discrepancies".

So its your lack of reading comprehension which is the problem all along...

Surur

Posted by surur | December 17, 2007 11:35 AM

Depending on the definition of a smartphone, it would not be impossible to think that the iPhone has sold that well in the US. All of those numbers might be suspect in some various forms. But they all do point to a few (US) trends. the iPhone is clearly making an imprint on the market; if it were cheaper it would have killed a lot of everything else.

I made my explaination for the browsing discrepancy a while back; but its simply that having a platform that uses web-based apps means that you will be in the browser more often. You don't need to be in the browser on WM, and its browser pales in compairson to Safari, therefore with a lower user expereince, fewer people and websites will talk about mobile web in the context of WM devices than with the iPhone.

Would be nice to see more phones step up on the UX front; maybe then we might see something more than RAZRs and 7100 BBs in the US as "stylish" phones.

Posted by Antoine of MMM | December 17, 2007 11:41 AM

According to the graph in Q3 only 217 000 PalmOS smartphones were sold, meaning around 70% of Palm's Treo sales are WM.

Surur

Posted by surur | December 17, 2007 11:50 AM

They are probably playing fast and loose with their definition of what a smartphone is, like in past presentations where they only looked at "mid-range smartphones", ignoring the PDA phones which form the predominate part of the Windows Mobile market share.

Agreed. The problem in the past (as we've discussed previously) has been that Canalys reported 'smartphone' sales and sales of 'smart mobile devices' where:

'smart mobile devices' = 'smartphones' + 'wireless handhelds' + 'PDAs'

- they effectively split what most of us call 'smartphones' into 'smartphones' and 'wireless handhelds' and didn't provide enough info to fully disaggregate the figures. In the past Symbian have seem to have just reported 'smartphones' (as Canalys define them), and they're probably doing the same now.

Anyway, the iPhone is clearly doing very well in North America - that is though, as the Symbian document shows, a very unusual market.

Posted by marcol | December 17, 2007 11:56 AM

and its browser pales in compairson to Safari

That's the bit that seems the most likely explanation to me. I was using PIE on a Vodafone V16-whatever (rebranded Kaiser) at the weekend. It really is quite crap.

Posted by marcol | December 17, 2007 12:10 PM

At the same time, according to the table, RIMM shipped 1.8 million smartphones in Q4 2006, but according the the graph they only shipped about 800 000.
Edit: This still stands

No, it doesn't.

Posted by archie | December 17, 2007 12:24 PM

Archie, maybe on everythingiphone they just believe everything you say, but on this forum you going to have to do a bit more work.

Word of the day - Zirconia

Surur

Posted by surur | December 17, 2007 12:32 PM

[...]
At the same time, according to the table, RIMM shipped 1.8 million smartphones in Q4 2006, but according the the graph they only shipped about 800 000.
Edit: This still stands
[...]

They are probably playing fast and loose with their definition of what a smartphone is, like in past presentations where they only looked at "mid-range smartphones", ignoring the PDA phones which form the predominate part of the Windows Mobile market share.

Surur

I'm having a hard time seeing anything that represents 800,000. Can I get a pointer as to which graph you're looking at?

And yes, Canalys does play fast and loose with the smartphone term (just like Gartner), but it shouldn't be relevant here. Canalys uses 4 terms in their reports:
[list]
[*]smart phone, which has some useless market subset definition,
[*]handheld, which has some useless market subset definition,
[*]wireless handheld, which has some useless market subset definition, and
[*]smart mobile device, which is all three useless subsets lumped together, the totality of all of these various kinds of smartphones. this one is the useful one for our purposes.
[/LIST]

Judging by the cites in the Symbian fast facts site, they're referencing the useful all-inclusive smart mobile device section and changing the 'smart mobile device' language to the term everyone else understands, i.e. smartphone.

The report *should* therefore also include suretype devices like the BB Pearl, as well as more pda-based windows mobile device, based on our prior research into Canalys press releases. I don't know why the chart seems to be missing 1m blackberries though.

Anyone know why Microsoft doesn't provide sales data? :evil:

Posted by Overthrow | December 17, 2007 1:30 PM

I read it from the world wide market share by OS since 2005.

Surur

Posted by surur | December 17, 2007 1:32 PM

Archie, maybe on everythingiphone they just believe everything you say, but on this forum you going to have to do a bit more work.

Tell me more about this "everythingiphone"... is it an iPhone website or something?

Posted by archie | December 17, 2007 2:46 PM

I read it from the world wide market share by OS since 2005.

Exactly my point, so your point does not stand.

Read the chart titles next time.

Posted by archie | December 17, 2007 2:49 PM

Exactly my point, so your point does not stand.

Read the chart titles next time.

Archie, I'll try and pitch it to you slooowly. We do not have independent data for the US. I have shown the worldwide data is inconsistent, so why should be believe the US data.

Get it? Probably not...

Surur

Posted by surur | December 17, 2007 3:21 PM

I have resized this graph so one pixel is 100 000 units.

People can measure for themselves, but for me, in Q4 2006, RIMM only has 8-9 pixels. According to canalys's own figures the shipped 1.8 million in the same quarter. Obviously another million gone missing.

To spell it out for Archie, if their figures are so radically different, how can we trust them?

Surur

Posted by surur | December 17, 2007 3:36 PM

I have resized this graph so one pixel is 100 000 units.

People can measure for themselves, but for me, in Q4 2006, RIMM only has 8-9 pixels. According to canalys's own figures the shipped 1.8 million in the same quarter. Obviously another million gone missing.

To spell it out for Archie, if their figures are so radically different, how can we trust them?

Surur

People reading this should realize (and look at the Symbian link themselves) that surur is spinning, as he always does, to color himself in the glorious manner that he wants us to look upon him in.

There are results broken down by region, which should be the focus here since the iPhone was not in any other region besides the US in this 3rd quarter. There you will also discover the RIMM numbers. This is why a put Worldwide in boldface.

Posted by archie | December 17, 2007 3:56 PM

Archie, where's your independent numbers for RIMM in the US?

Gloriously indeed.

Surur

Posted by surur | December 17, 2007 4:09 PM

Anyone know why Microsoft doesn't provide sales data? :evil:

Ballmer at least seems better at predicting the future than revealing the past. Last shareholder meeting he said:

[INDENT]"As I said in my remarks, we hope to sell, and I think we will sell, 20 million phones this year."[/INDENT]

If he's going to make these sort of predictions it certainly would be nice if he'd come back later and tell us if he was right.

Posted by marcol | December 18, 2007 9:14 AM

He did say that after revealing that they sold 11 million WM licenses for "converged devices" (what you and I call smartphones) in the last financial year (I think June 2006 to June 2007), 85% up from the previous financial year. Seeing how we are half way through the next one we better have sold around 10 million already in the last 6 months. Hit devices like the HTC Touch and Kaiser will certainly help, as can be seen by HTC's bulging coffers.

Interestingly if you add up the total sales of WM devices from that Canalys graph from the same period you only get 5 million smartphones sold, meaning 6 million are absent from the graph (probably what Canalys calls wireless handhelds but I call my HTC Kaiser).

To further show how this data misrepresents WM shares, On the graph from 2005, a total of around 1.1 million WM smartphones were sold in Q1 and Q2 2005. However if we look at Canalys's published data from the same time period, we get Q105 2 million, Q205 1.9 million (total 3.9 million windows mobile devices).

The lesson here is know who the audience of the intended communication is aimed for. In this case its Symbian developers, and the agenda is Symbian dominance, hence the downplaying of the WM market-share. Its quite likely only Q's Dash's and Blackjacks are counted, and all the Tilts, Monguls and Wing's are ignored.

Surur

Posted by surur | December 18, 2007 9:28 AM

Archie, where's your independent numbers for RIMM in the US?

Gloriously indeed.

Surur

I don't know what you want me to say.

The link you provide is not for 2007 as you want us to believe. It is for 2006. The particular numbers that I suspect you are looking for are not even released yet but everything else is there.

Posted by archie | December 18, 2007 11:28 AM

I don't know what you want me to say.

The link you provide is not for 2007 as you want us to believe. It is for 2006. The particular numbers that I suspect you are looking for are not even released yet but everything else is there.

2007 Archie, 2007. Lying wont help your case.

Research In Motion Reports Second Quarter Results

Waterloo, ON - Research In Motion Limited (RIM) (Nasdaq: RIMM; TSX: RIM), a world leader in the mobile communications market, today reported second quarter results for the three months ended September 1, 2007 (all figures in U.S. dollars and U.S. GAAP).

Revenue for the second quarter of fiscal 2008 was $1.37 billion, up 27% from $1.08 billion in the previous quarter and up 108% from $658.5 million in the same quarter of last year. The revenue breakdown for the quarter was approximately 78% for devices, 15% for service, 4% for software and 3% for other revenue. Approximately 1.45 million BlackBerry� subscriber accounts were added in the quarter and over 3 million devices were shipped. The total BlackBerry subscriber account base at the end of the second quarter was approximately 10.5 million.

http://www.rim.com/news/press/2007/pr-04_10_2007-01.shtml

Archie, in case you are still not catching on, if their worldwide data excludes some blackberry's and WM devices, how can their regional breakdown be meaningful?

Surur

Posted by surur | December 18, 2007 12:55 PM

Thanks. I got the Ballmer quote from Microsoft's own transcript of its last shareholder meeting:

http://www.microsoft.com/msft/download/transcripts/fy07/AnnualShareholderMeeting111307.doc

As far as I can see there's no mention there of an actual phone sales number, only the prediction for the next year.

The Brighthand article you link says:

"More than 11 million Windows Mobile licenses were sold during the last twelve months � an 85% increase over the number of licenses sold during the same period of the previous year."

I presume this includes all WM licences, and so includes (non-phone) PDAs as well as phones. Thus without knowing the number of PDAs sold we can't really say from that figure how many WM phones were sold last year, except that it is less than 11 million. Also, as the second article you link says, the licence sales and device sales are not the same thing.

The lesson here is know who the audience of the intended communication is aimed for. In this case its Symbian developers, and the agenda is Symbian dominance, hence the downplaying of the WM market-share. Its quite likely only Q's Dash's and Blackjacks are counted, and all the Tilts, Monguls and Wing's are ignored.

As I said, I suspect that your analysis here is basically correct, but, equally, including PDAs in the WM figure also rather muddies the water. The comparison I'd like to see is sales of actual devices for iPhone vs WM phones, both in the US and globally. We know the iPhone numbers of course (from Apple), but I still haven't seen a convincing number for actual WM phone sales (i.e. not predictions, not licence sales and not including PDAs).

Posted by marcol | December 19, 2007 5:20 AM

The second link is by group product manager for Windows Mobile, and if he specifically says converged devices it suggests PDA's are excluded.

John Dietz, group product manager for Windows Mobile in Microsoft's mobile communications business.
.
.
.
"Last year, we sold 11 million Windows Mobile licenses for converged devices," Dietz says. "That was double the year before, and we expect to sell another 20 million next year."

http://www.pdastreet.com/articles/2007/9/2007-9-19-Advanced-Mobile-Applications.html

MS can only know how many licenses they sell. What the ODM/OEM's do with them is up to them, but I would suggest they would not buy 85% more than the previous year if they did not anticipate selling more than they did before.

Anyway, its because WM numbers are complicated that I am focussing on RIMM numbers, and worldwide numbers, as a) they publish in total how many they ship and b) they all contain cell radios.

For example, RIM says in Q2 2007 (ending June 2007) they shipped 2.4 million blackberrys, while the graph suggests they shipped only 1.2 million. Basing any conclusion on information taken from this circular is very suspect.

Surur

Posted by surur | December 19, 2007 5:55 AM

The second link is by group product manager for Windows Mobile, and if he specifically says converged devices it suggests PDA's are excluded.

I've done a bit of research on this and I think you're right. Microsoft's WM site isn't very helpful but it does cite various IDC studies of 'converged devices', e.g. here:

http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/press/2006/feb06/02-143GSMKeyNotePR.mspx

and IDC say:

[INDENT]"IDC defines a converged mobile device as a mobile phone having a high-level operating system, such as BlackBerry, Linux, Palm, Symbian, or Windows Mobile."[/INDENT]
http://www.idc.com/getdoc.jsp?containerId=prUS20350406

Presuming Microsoft use the term in the same way non-phone PDAs would be excluded and the Brighthand article was just a bit sloppy. The only nagging doubts I have are that 1) this means that Microsoft generally ignore PDAs altogether and 2) Microsoft too might be playing fast and loose with terminology to inflate their numbers.

MS can only know how many licenses they sell. What the ODM/OEM's do with them is up to them, but I would suggest they would not buy 85% more than the previous year if they did not anticipate selling more than they did before.

For sure but Dietz does say the numbers are different, and you have to expect that the number of licences > number of devices sold in any particular period. I don't know how this works but would presume that licences need to be bought well before devices are sold and to a certain extent increases in licence numbers prefigure increases in device sales. This could lead to big errors, especially in an a market that's expanding quite rapidly.

Posted by marcol | December 19, 2007 6:52 AM

Possibly, but since we are only talking licenses here, not physical goods, I'm sure orders on a quarterly basis would be perfectly fine.

Surur

Posted by surur | December 19, 2007 7:14 AM

Doesn't surprise me a bit if the idiotPhone is number 2. The fact is that american consumers are complete and total idiots, so how appropriate that they would waste money on a device that is all sizzle and no steak. No expandability, no user replaceable battery, no extra applications to speak of.

I tried an idiotPhone at the ATT store. It was cool for about a minute. My Treo 750 is far superior.

Posted by treoconvert | December 19, 2007 4:16 PM

This Just In!
[SIZE="3">surur[/SIZE] Has No Idea What He Is Talking About!

The particular numbers that I suspect you are looking for are not even released yet but everything else is there.

So as you may recall, for anyone reading this, surur was talking crap and casting doubt. Well, today RIM finally released the numbers (and don't forget, I said as much) for THEIR quarter ending December 1.

They stand at about 1.65 million new subscribers and at LEAST that many phones without subscriptions (that is still possible, right?).

So you can no longer cast the results aside by trying to discredit them. Face it, the iPhone is doing better than you expected.

Posted by archie | December 21, 2007 3:27 AM

I don't know if you are paying attention but the iPhone is getting 8.25 hours talk-time, 30 hours audio playback, 7 hours video playback or 6 hours on the internet. Why would you need to carry around an extra battery. If you want to carry around an extra something to provide even MORE power, there are plug-in battery packs/chargers that are available that act as instant power or quick chargers.

No expandability? Again, you have been locked up (or are a troll, :rolleyes: or just another surur alias)
I have an iPhone acting as a web server. Tell me - can your Treo do that?

Posted by archie | December 21, 2007 3:43 AM

This Just In!
[SIZE="3">surur[/SIZE] Has No Idea What He Is Talking About!

So as you may recall, for anyone reading this, surur was talking crap and casting doubt. Well, today RIM finally released the numbers (and don't forget, I said as much) for THEIR quarter ending December 1.

They stand at about 1.65 million new subscribers and at LEAST that many phones without subscriptions (that is still possible, right?).

So you can no longer cast the results aside by trying to discredit them. Face it, the iPhone is doing better than you expected.

Archie, you know, if you are dyslexic, it doesn't necessarily mean you are stupid. You can tell us if you are having difficulty reading whats on the page, or if you dont understand what Q3 2007 means. We would be a lot more forgiving.

In case you are afraid to admit your impediments, it means Quarter 3 2007, i.e. (sorry, in other words) the 3rd 3 months of the year, July, August and September.

Archie, please tell me you get it now. It would be so sad if you did not.... We are really only trying to help you, you know.

[SIZE="4">PS: Tell me if making the font bigger would help you read better.[/SIZE]

PPS: I've added a graphic with high contrast colours and unexpected shapes to aid in your comprehension and retention.

Notice where the personalized 'Archie Pointing Fish' is pointing. As mentioned earlier (but I will repeat just for you) Q3 means June, July and August 2007.

Surur

Posted by surur | December 21, 2007 4:11 AM

Well, today RIM finally released the numbers (and don't forget, I said as much) for THEIR quarter ending December 1.

They stand at about 1.65 million new subscribers and at LEAST that many phones without subscriptions (that is still possible, right?).

Research In Motion Reports Third Quarter Results

Waterloo, ON - Research In Motion Limited (RIM)(NASDAQ:RIMM)(TSX:RIM), a world leader in the mobile communications market, today reported [COLOR="Red">[SIZE="3">third quarter results for the three months ended December 1, 2007 ([/SIZE][/COLOR]all figures in U.S. dollars and U.S. GAAP).

Revenue for the third quarter of fiscal 2008 was $1.67 billion, up 22% from $1.37 billion in the previous quarter and up 100% from $835.1 million in the same quarter of last year. The revenue breakdown for the quarter was approximately 80% for devices, 14% for service, 4% for software and 2% for other revenue. Approximately 1.65 million BlackBerry� subscriber accounts were added in the quarter and over [COLOR="Red">[SIZE="4">3.9 million devices were shipped. [/SIZE] [/COLOR] The total BlackBerry subscriber account base at the end of the third quarter was approximately 12 million.

http://www.rim.net/news/press/2007/pr-20_12_2007-01.shtml

Notice how I used large fonts and bright colours to help you? I hope this will help you catch the information you clearly missed last time a bit better.

Also, I hope you are not confused by RIMM talking about their 3rd quarter. You probably dont know this, but company's Financial Years often do not start at the same time as Calender Years.

Please tell me if there is anything more I can help you with. Just because you are less fortunate does not mean you have to suffer in ignorance.

Surur

Posted by surur | December 21, 2007 6:01 AM

Why do you choose to ignore what I say.

I said 1.65 million new subscribers (numbers that Engadget deemed important enough to point out). Then I said their final product shipments would of course be at least that many.

So then to account for your inconsequential worry (lets be honest here), those third quarter numbers only account for 2 months (July and August) of RIMs numbers (because as I pointed out from the very beginning, they had not reported their next quarters numbers yet (September, October and November).

Posted by archie | December 21, 2007 12:56 PM

BTW, Archie, considering your problem, its not surprising that you managed to read only half of RIMM's press release. Those rose-coloured glasses are clearly not helping. Here, I'll try and make it a bit easier for you.

http://www.rim.net/news/press/2007/pr-20_12_2007-01.shtml

Notice how I used large fonts and bright colours to help you? I hope this will help you catch the information you clearly missed last time a bit better.

Also, I hope you are not confused by RIMM talking about their 3rd quarter. You probably dont know this, but company's Financial Years often do not start at the same time as Calender Years.

Please tell me if there is anything more I can help you with. Just because you are less fortunate does not mean you have to suffer in ignorance.

Surur

I find it quite ironic that you point out to me the very thing you seem to gloss over.

Posted by archie | December 21, 2007 1:00 PM

Because RIM sold nothing in September?

Also, you do realize devices sold to Blackberry upgraders wont add new subscriptions, dont you?

Archie, do you at least acknowledge that the Canalys graph does not count all RIM devices shipped? Yes or no?

Surur

Posted by surur | December 21, 2007 1:01 PM

Archie, I'll make the calculation a bit easier for you. If they sold 3 million in June, July and August, thats 1 million per month. If they sold 3.9 million in September, October and November thats 1.3 million per month.

Therefore calender Q3 (July, August and September) would be 1+1+1.3= 3.3 million shipped. So instead of just under-counting by 1 million the Canalys graph under-counted by 1.3 million.

It seems your point makes you case even weaker, but thats usually the case with you.

Surur

Posted by surur | December 21, 2007 1:20 PM

The iPhone

Proof positive that PT Barnum was right.

There is an idiot born every minute...

Posted by treoconvert | December 26, 2007 1:35 PM

The iPhone

Proof positive that PT Barnum was right.

There is an idiot born every minute...

With insightful commentary such as this, PT Barnum proved there is more than one type of sucker.

Posted by lifes2short | December 26, 2007 4:34 PM

Very good! You have demonstrated your ability to calculate the mean. What you fail to recognize is (skewed) distribution; therefore, your conclusion is incorrect and invalid for the argument at hand. The very same press release you quoted said as much when they indicated the numbers were heavily weighted towards the end of the quarter.

Posted by archie | December 26, 2007 7:48 PM

I can pee farther than both of you!!!!!

Posted by bobdelt | December 26, 2007 8:31 PM

[quote=bobdelt;1391715]I can pee farther than both of you!!!!!

LMAO!! That was too funny. :D

Posted by scandalex | December 26, 2007 11:13 PM

So you are still proposing they shipped nothing in September?

Surur

Posted by surur | December 27, 2007 3:45 AM