Apple, With 4 Percent of Handset Market, Captures 52 Percent of Profits
The iPhone maker had more than half of all the profits reported by handset makers in the third quarter, Samsung second with 29 percent of operating profits.
Apple may have lost its crown as the top shipper of smartphones this past quarter, but the iPhone maker hauled in more than half of the mobile industry's operating profits during that period, according to a new research note from Canaccord Genuity analyst T. Michael Walkley.
That despite having just 4.2 percent of the global handset market.
"With Nokia in the midst of a challenging smartphone strategy transition and our checks indicating RIM and Motorola Mobility continue to struggle in North America given the increasingly competitive Android smartphone market, we believe Apple will gain further value share in the December quarter and could capture over 60 percent of industry profits," Walkley wrote in his note, according to All Things D.
Samsung in the third quarter, according to separate reports from IDC and Strategy Analytics last week. But Samsung's margins of 17 percent on its handsets were dwarfed by Apple's 35 percent margins for the quarter. So while Samsung did capture a healthy 29 percent of operating profits in the third quarter, Apple was king with 52 percent of the profits available to handset makers from July to September (full chart below).
Apple only makes high-margin smartphones, so while it did own about a 15 percent percent share of that market in the third quarter, according to industry research, its share of the overall handset market came in at below 5 percent. Samsung accounted for nearly 24 percent of smartphone shipments in the quarter and had about 22 percent of the overall mobile phone market in the three-month period.
While Samsung was overshadowed by Apple in terms of operating profit in the quarter, other handset makers were absolutely obliterated. Nokia shipped far and away the most units in the third quarter𤹂.6 million, according to IDC—but captured just 4 percent of the operating profits during the period.
HTC and Research in Motion each had less than 10 percent of the profits reported by handset makers for the quarter, while Sony Ericsson struggled to scratch out 1 percent. LG Electronics and Motorola Mobility reported losses in the third quarter.