When Steve Jobs passed away in 2011 after a battle with cancer, it didn’t take long for people to predict Apple’s decline. For instance, Larry Ellison, founder of Oracle, suggested that Apple would slip into a period of long-term decline.
But two and a half years later, one might question that. While Apple’s stock price has had its ups and downs, it is higher now than during the Jobs era. Company sales have grown, too, although net profits have come under some pressure.
Judging from the latest comScore statistics, the Apple platform is picking up market share, both in terms of subscribers and as a mobile platform.
Apple smartphone subscribers now count for 41.8% of the market, as of December 2013. Back in June when we reported the numbers, Apple had just 39% of subscribers in the United States. Those numbers had grown from the earlier quarter, also. In other words, Apple is still growing.
By contrast, Motorola’s phone share declined a bit. Only Samsung showed growth among the big five manufacturers — Apple, Motorola, Samsung, HTC and LG.
Those numbers measure subscribers by smartphone maker. In other words, out of the 156 million people in the U.S. who owned smartphones, nearly 42% or roughly 65 million of those were Apple devices.
When you look at the operating platform, the picture’s a bit different. Google’s Android platform (spread out among different manufacturers) is still number one. It has 51.3% of the market, but showed a slight decline of 0.3%. Clearly, Google owning Motorola didn’t do much to grow Android in the near term. What will happen to Motorola now that Google has spun it off to Lenovo, is still a question, however.
Blackberry, once the darling of entrepreneurs and small businesses everywhere, continued its sad slide. Its market share has been halved in the past year, and now stands at around 3.4%.
Apple, despite predictions of its decline, appears to be doing fine under CEO Tim Cook. So if your company needs to invest in new mobile devices or make platform choices, it seems like Apple is still a strong growing platform.
Image: Wikipedia
By ‘Apple Devices’, does that mean that they are counting old devices as well? I must admit that the old iPhone is better than the new ones. Sure, the new ones are packed with features but I still think it is now at par with Android.