According to DigiTimes [via IntoMobile], Apple has poached Samsung Executive Scott Huang to fill a slot at Apple Taiwan. Huang was VP of Samsung’s Mobile Communications unit and seems to have his finger on the pulse of the Taiwanese smartphone market. Hint: it’s seriously poised for some serious growth, seriously.
Given how gigantic their splash in the US has been, it’s sometimes easy to forget that Apple is just getting started in the global market. They may be the #2 smartphone state-side, but worldwide they have a lot of work to do. Expect a lot of hires like this in the near future as Apple realizes that different countries have different issues to be dealt with — the folks that have grokked how to dominate the US don’t necessarily know how to dominate other markets, and it’s a good sign that Apple gets this.
We’re looking at just over 6 months of sales and the iPhone is rocking the marketshare in the Smartphone category like you wouldn’t believe. According to Canalys (whose numbers we’ve admittedly doubted before, but these results look pretty solid), the iPhone has reached 28% marketshare among Smartphones in the US and 7% worldwide. That puts it at #2 in the US and #3 worldwide. They’re even ahead of Motorola.
Also, the iPhone is beating the pants off of the PalmOS (down to 9%) and also Windows Mobile (21%) in the United States. The only question left is whether or not Apple can gain on RIM’s imposing 41% share. That will require converting a lot of business users.
Actually, the other question is whether or not Apple can maintain that share without releasing a 3G iPhone in the near future. The drumbeat of analyst, stockholder, and most importantly consumer desire for the 3G iPhone is going to get steadily louder in the coming months.
Canalys [via GearDiary]
In the Phone different forums, surur (with the help of marcol) has posted up some fine analysis on the question of all those missing iPhones we mentioned a couple weeks back. The question: whether or not iPhone sales had slumped over the holidays (they didn’t), but more importantly, how big is the gap between what Apple says they’ve sold and what AT&T says they’ve sold. As you can see in the graph above, it’s a big gap that’s getting bigger.
I’d previously doubted that a significant part of that gap was unlocked iPhones and unsold inventory. It seemed like the 1.5 million gap had to be some error in reporting or other such strangeness. But based on what analysis is available, it’s starting to look like “unlocked and unsold iPhones” are exactly what makes up that gap.
The real question, then, is what the ratio is of unlocked to unsold. Actually, the real question is what does this gap tell us about how Apple is going to be able to talk about the iPhone. Read on for the answers to both questions, after the break!
Read the rest of this entry »
