During Apple’s last conference call, Steve Jobs positively cooed about Apple’s iPhone passing RIM’s Blackberry in sales last month. If anyone had any doubts, Canalys says it’s so (for whatever that bag of analysis is worth). According to Apple Insider, they pegged the market as Nokia 46.6%, Apple 17.3, RIM 15.2, and Windows Mobile 13.6. (Google’s Android, of course, was not yet launched and Palm… er… Palm?)
While some have cited Bold delays, Storm warnings, an iPhone 3G honeymoon, and other reasons to explain Apple’s good fortunes last quarter, JD Powers 2008 Business Wireless Smartphone Customer Satisfaction Study gives an even more interesting answer: Business users like the iPhone better!
Blackberrys are okay, and Palms are teh sux, by contrast, according to the survey. The iPhone’s edge? ease of use, feature set and design. Engadget points out that the iPhone scored 5/5 on features, in spite of our ongoing complaints about the lack of cut and paste, A2DP, MMS, etc., etc. ad naseum infinitum.
ahem
So maybe, just maybe, users prefer a smaller set of features done delightfully well to a gobsmack of them cobbled together with near impenetrability?
Who’da thunk it?
Yesterday we covered some of the blogswarm surrounding the iPhone having (possibly!) already sold 10 million units, becoming the most popular smartphone in the US, and the 2nd most popular handset in the US.
Well, Windows Super-Siter Paul Thurrott retorts:
So this is just like Mac market share, in other words. It’s a subset of a subset of a market, picked to make the picture look even rosier than it really is. It’s US sales of smart phones to consumers over the counter at retail locations only, not “US sales of smart phones.” Most smart phones are sold to business users, not consumers, incidentally. And that means that “typical” smart phone sales are corporate sales, not consumer sales. This whole thing is a crock.
So, is Paul right? Are the sales numbers cherry-picked, smoke shrouded, mirror-skewed, squinted at slivers of fantasized reality? Or is he, a well known iPhone and Mac user, just trolling to get sites like ours to link to his blog? (D’oh!)
Confession: We don’t have any idea where Net Applications really gets their numbers from either. Ars Technica says they:
Collect [web metrics] data from an “exclusive on-demand network of live stats customers” compiled from some “160 million visitors per month”
But they could just as soon be reading runes or casting the bones. However they get them, if we can assume it’s a consistent measure, then iPhone is still on the rise, going from just under 0.2 in July to hitting 0.3 in August. Doesn’t sound particularly big? Well, it confirms the numbers Casey cited last week, and its out of all operating systems everywhere, and it’s for tiny little MobileSafari.
In other words, in the very big pond, our tiny 3G fish is putting on some serious weight.
ChangeWave is back with trends in intended smartphone buying for June 2008. The good? The iPhone has soared from 29% to 56% from a low this time last year of 18%. The bad? Rim has tumbled from 29% to 23% from a high of 33% last July. The ugly? Palm has held steady at 3%, having free fallen from 24% way back in late 2006.
The iPhone dominated almost all rounds, causing an overall increase in planned smartphone purchases to 10%. Satisfaction levels were through the roof at 78% (way above RIM’s 54% and trouncing Palm’s 29%)
Blackberry held on to the title of reigning email monster, with a holding-steady 42% ownership of that space, but Apple is making inroads even there, up to 11%.
The KO? Of those planning to buy a smartphone fully 50% plan on getting an iPhone over the Blackberry and Palm.
We expect Big John to jump in and end the slaughter any minute…
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