Mikey Campbell
Fresh data from IDC shows that Samsung surpassed Apple in collective PC, portable PC, tablet and smartphone shipments for 2012, with the Korean outfit moving 250 million devices over the 12 month period.
Overall, the segment, which IDC calls "smart connected devices," reached shipments of 367.7 million units in the last quarter of 2012, up 28.3 percent from one year ago. For the entire year, the firm's Worldwide Quarterly Smart Connected Device Tracker saw manufacturers ship a staggering 1.2 billion devices, a 29.1 percent uptick from 2011.
Driving the shift toward the so-called smart connected devices were Apple and Samsung, which combined took a 41.3 percent share of the market in the December quarter. While Apple was the previous number one vendor, taking a large portion of smartphone sales and being largely uncontested in the tablet arena, Samsung edged out the Cupertino, Calif., company by a little over 3 million shipped units for the last quarter of 2012.
Samsung took 21.2 percent of the smart connected device market on shipments of 77.9 million, up 86 percent from the year ago quarter. By comparison, Apple's marketshare grew by 29.7 percent over the same period to hit 20.3 percent of the market on shipments of 74.8 million units.
"The fourth quarter market share numbers showed a fairly dramatic resurgence for Apple," said Bob O'Donnell, IDC vice president of the Clients and Displays program. "After falling well behind Samsung early in 2012, Apple came roaring back in final quarter of the year thanks to its latest hits – the iPhone 5 and the iPad Mini – and reduced the market share gap to less than a single percentage point. The question moving forward will be whether or not Apple can maintain its hit parade against the juggernaut of Samsung."
Coming in a distant third was Lenovo, which managed to net 6.6 percent of the market after shipping 24.3 million devices, a year-over-year change of 47.2 percent. HP and Sony rounded out the top five with unit shipments of 15.1 million and 11.1 million, representing 4.1 percent and 3 percent of the market, respectively.
For the year, Samsung shipped 250 million units, representing a 119.3 percent year-to-year increase that was fueled in large part by the company's popular smartphone lineup. The iPad's dominance helped Apple stay close in overall numbers as the tablet market enjoyed a growth rate of 78.4 percent, the highest of any smart connected device.
The metrics tell only half the story, however, as shipment values went unreported. In December, IDC found that for the third quarter of 2012, Samsung lead in device volumes, but Apple's high-value products raked in the most cash. At the time, Apple trailed Samsung in quarterly market share by 6.7 percent, compared to the last quarter's 1.9 percent gap.
Christine McKee
Andrew Orr
Charles Martin
Marko Zivkovic
Wesley Hilliard
62 Comments
Unfortunately, they never define 'smart connected devices'. If Samsung shipped 78 M of these devices, they're including everything that connects to the Internet-including feature phones. (Of course, we'll get the usual whining that Android isn't used on feature phones - even though I provided over half a dozen examples with just a few minutes searching last time the question came up).
"The question moving forward will be whether or not Apple can maintain its hit parade against the juggernaut of Samsung."
Conversely whether Samsung can maintain it's hit parade of high end devices against the juggernaut of Apple and make a decent return on the low end devices which form the majority of their sales, just ask Nokia where that road leads.
But what the hey, the author of the report had to throw in this fashionable statement denigrating Apple.
(Of course, we'll get the usual whining that Android isn't used on feature phones - even though I provided over half a dozen examples with just a few minutes searching last time the question came up).
Technically any Android phone is a "smartphone" just like the Symbian phones they are replacing, the devil in the detail is whether they are being used as such.
shipped vs activation
Unfortunately, they never define 'smart connected devices'.
IDC's website defined the devices as "Desktop PCs, portable PCs, tablets, and smartphones". That was even mentioned in the first sentence of the thread article.
If Samsung shipped 78 M of these devices, they're including everything that connects to the Internet-including feature phones.
After looking up shipments for 4Q 2012, we easily calculate that 78 million meant ~64 million smartphones plus ~ 14 million of the other connected devices... not much.
If IDC had included feature phones, Samsung's total would've been closer to 125 million.
IDC have clearly not included the iPod Touch in their figures for Apple.