The research firm Gartner reports that, for the second quarter of 2009, the iPhone continues to increase its market share on a world-wide level. In fact, it leads the way with the highest increase of market share, as sales increased by 10.5% from one year ago.

This increase of market share can be accounted for due to a few separate reasons. For starters, the early June price drop of the iPhone 3G to $99 was clearly a great way to move inventory while boosting sales. Apple’s product release timing is also plays a large role in their success. While releasing iPhone 3GS to the market at the very end of the second quarter of 2009 all of the initial sales were included in this report.

Everyone knows the iPhone took mind share early on, and there’s little doubt left they own profit share as well. It will be interesting to see where market share ultimately ends up…

[via MacRumors]

This is a story by the iPhone Blog. This feed is sponsored by The iPhone Blog Store.

iPhone Market Share Continuing to Climb

So while Apple is ramping up production of the iPhone 3G, it looks like the rest of the cell phone industry is in a serious slump. Kind of. According to the NPD, (via Ars Technica) only 28 million cell phones were sold this quarter representing a 13% year-to-year decline. But looking specifically at the model-by-model numbers, it looks like everyone is enjoying success on Motorola’s dime.

“Quarterly unit-sales of handsets fell to their lowest level, since NPD begin tracking the category in 2005,” NPD director of industry analysis Ross Rubin said in a statement. “Even so, most major manufacturers picked up market share that was lost by Motorola.”

In related news, MobileSafari has been on an absolute tear since the release of the iPhone 3G. According to Analysts, (via MacDailyNews) MobileSafari has nearly doubled its market share to 0.31% since the launch. Doing rudimentary math, having more handsets on the market that are twice as fast as the old one, well, I guess it adds up.

And to top it all off, our friends at Engadget have created an iPhone specific web page. Why, you ask? Because in 2008, the iPhone/iPod Touch Family has accounted for nearly 96% of all mobile views on their full Engadget site. That’s just jaw dropping.

So that’s the state of the industry. Surprised that the iPhone 3G has had such an effect on the numbers? What’s to come?

This is a story by the iPhone Blog. This feed is sponsored by The iPhone Blog Store.

The Numbers: Cell Phones Down, Smartphones Up, MobileSafari WAY UP

As Rene just mentioned in the previous post, we’re getting sales numbers for various iPhone apps and these sales numbers are very, very promising. John Casasanta of development house Tap Tap Tap hit us up on our tip line about his article on the sales figures at the App Store.

Early on, folks in the Blogosphere were able to get a handle on sales figures simply by checking the download count at the bottom of each page. Apple apparently decided that developers might just want to keep some of that info private, so that was taken down around the same time that Apple started actually delivering real sales numbers to developers. Many of these developers, as Rene mentioned, are just going ahead and publishing these sales numbers despite, as Casasanta says, traditional business instincts to hide exact numbers because they don’t want to seem to be bragging or (if things aren’t going well), failing.

But these numbers are news because of their sheer size — it’s almost as if developers are compelled to share in the same way we might if we’d, say, won the lottery. “Look, I know it’s not nice to brag, but Holy Crap Look At This.”

Tap Tap Tap’s “Where To?” (App Store Link) has sold over 3,000 in a week. Eliza Block’s 2 Across (seriously, it’s the best crossword app out there — App Store Link) is selling hundreds a day. Pandora (free and awesome) had 350,000 installs. Facebook’s over a million. We could go on.

We can’t say this information dump from developers is going to last forever, though we sort of hope it does. It’s not just that we’re interested in seeing who’s doing well, it’s that we’re excited for the platform and word needs to be spread now and into the future: there’s money in them thar iTunes pages. What remains to be seen is whether this gold rush will mature into a stable economy/ecosystem/platform. Right now, we think it’s pretty safe to say it will.

If there was ever any question that you could make a living developing iPhone applications, the answer right now is hell yes. After the gold rush (cue Neil Young), there’s a good chance that the iPhone platform will be the Smartphone Economy equivalent of the California Economy — big enough to register as its own national economy if you wanted to measure it that way, an essential part of the actual national economy; the free-wheeling, 3-hours-behind-but-5-years-ahead center of innovation. Phone different, indeed.

Overstatement? Maybe, but with numbers like these it’s tough to avoid.

This is a story by the iPhone Blog. This feed is sponsored by The iPhone Blog Store.

iPhone App Development: It’s a Living