When I was working at Nokia back in 2008/2009, the team I was a part of started noticing a disturbing trend: The mobile phone market was starting to mimic the PC market. By that I mean the top three to five players, quarter after quarter, were controlling a smaller and smaller piece of the pie.
So it’s with little surprise that I present to you IDC’s Q2 2013 analysis, which says Samsung sold 72.4 million smartphones between April and June, giving them 30.4% of the market. Apple, meanwhile, is right behind them with 31.2 million phones or 13.1% of the market. But again, the real story is “others”, the companies that don’t even rank in the top five. They ended up selling over 100 million devices, giving them 42.4% market share. Just for fun, how big was “others” in the PC market? 40.4%. Whoa. Back to Samsung, the company also posted their Q2 2013 financial numbers, and guess what? Record quarter. $8.5 billion in profits from $51 billion in revenue. But just a small reminder, when I say “Samsung”, I mean “Samsung Electronics”, which sells a whole bunch of other stuff than just Galaxy phones.
