Tag: BB10

Handset sales up, Samsung gains share

Posted on May 14, 2013 by - News, Products

nexus4-ceSmartphone wars are becoming rather predictable. Every quarter sales notch up and every quarter Samsung emerges as the big winner. The last quarter was no exception. However, growth is slowing as the market matures, although there is still plenty of room for growth in emerging markets. 

Worldwide phone sales totalled 426 million units in the first quarter, up 0.7 percent year-on-year. Smartphones saw a lot more growth, with sales totalling 2010 million units, up 42.9 percent from a year ago, according to a Gartner survey.

Sales of feature phones are down in all regions except Asia, while smartphones accounted for 49.3 percent of all phone sales worldwide, up from 34.8 percent in Q1 2012. At the same time feature phone sales contracted 21.8 percent.

“Feature phones users across the world are either finding their existing phones good enough or are waiting for smartphones prices to drop further, either way the prospect of longer replacement cycles is certainly not good news for both vendors and carriers looking to move users forward,” Gartner analyst Anshul Gupta said.

Samsung saw its market share go up from 21.1 percent to 23.6 percent. Apple also did well, growing from 7.8 to 9 percent, while Nokia’s share dropped from 19.7 to 14.8 percent. However, looking at smartphone sales, Samsung’s share was 30.8 percent, up from 27.6 percent. It was trailed by Apple at 18.2 percent, down from 22.5 percent. LG grabbed the bronze, with a 4.8 percent share. Huawei also had a good quarter, upping their share to 4.4 and 3.8 percent respectively and outperforming former heavyweights like Nokia, Sony and HTC.

Android is still the dominant mobile operating system, with a share of 74.4 percent, up from 56.9 a year earlier. Apple’s iOS share stands at 18.2 percent, down from 22.5 percent a year ago. Just so it wouldn’t look like a two-horse race, Blackberry is still in the game with a 3 percent share, down from 6.8 percent last year. Apparently BB10 did not make a huge difference. Windows Phone has a 2.9 percent share, up from 1.9 percent last year. It is growing, but at a painfully slow rate.

Blackberry hit by yearly revenue drop

Posted on March 28, 2013 by - News

ripeunripeBlackberry lost two percent of revenue in its fourth quarter of fiscal 2013, down $49 million, and a massive 36 percent drop from $4.2 billion year on year. However, it forecasts breaking even for the next quarter and a mobile analyst has told us the company should be financially viable for some time to come.

For the quarter, hardware accounted for 61 percent of the revenue, 36 percent for service and three percent for software and other revenue. It shipped six million Blackberry smartphones and roughly 370,000 Playbook tablets.

One half of the two-headed dragon that founded and used to run the company, Mike Lazaridis, will be leaving the company.

For its outlook, Blackberry said it will be increasing marketing spend for Q1 of fiscal 2014 to support Blackberry 10. This is a planned 50 percent increase in marketing, and the firm thinks it will be near breaking even, citing lower cost base, a more efficient supply chain and better hardware margins.

Jim Dawson, analyst at Ovum, told ChannelEye that every other company that’s suffered a severe drop in device revenues has struggled because cust cotting at a rapid rate is difficult. “Blackberry appears to have done a great job executing on its CORE strategy which includes reducing costs, and has managed to bring costs down significantly,” Dawson said. “As such, it was profitable this past quarter and should break even next quarter”.

“Given its good cash balance and lack of debt, it should be financially viable for quite some time at this rate, so I’m not overly concerned about the drop in revenues,” Dawson said. “I’m more concerned about the drop in subscribers, which is a longer-term indicator that it’s losing customers faster than it can win new ones”.