The most common mobile operating systems used by modern smartphones include Google’s Android, Apple’s iOS, Nokia’s Symbian, RIM’s BlackBerry OS, Samsung’s Bada, Microsoft’s Windows Phone, Hewlett-Packard’s webOS, and embedded Linux distributions such as Maemo and MeeGo.
Despite the rapid growth of the smartphone market (41 percent YOY, to be exact), Samsung and Apple are the only smartphone makers really enjoying this growth.
The two companies again dominated the smartphone industry, combining to capture 55 percent of the market and 90 percent of the profits in the first quarter, according to a study by ABI Research.
While Samsung leads the industry with 43 million smartphones shipped, Apple remains the leader when it comes to making money off of its products.
Nokia, which largely gave up on its feature phone business and Symbian handsets to focus on smartphones and the Windows Phone platform with handsets like the Lumia 900, saw a 40 percent decline, with 11.9 million smartphones shipped in Q1.
When it comes to revenue, Samsung pulled in $17 billion from its combined mobile division during the period, with Apple mobile sales amounting to $22.57 billion ($29.3 billion counting iPad sales).
What’s worth noting is that the two companies have different strategies when it comes to their mobile business.
Usually they are downloaded from the platform to a target device such as an iPhone, BlackBerry, Android phone or Windows Phone 7, but sometimes they can be downloaded to less mobile computers such as laptops or desktops.
The bulk of its mobile operation surely comes from Android device sales, although the company does not share exact sales numbers for its handsets.
When it comes to Android smartphone sales, Samsung also offers customers a wide range of devices, from the high end Galaxy S family of flagship smartphones to mid ranged and low end handsets meant to be a lot more budget friendly.
This includes the Galaxy S III in many markets and Samsung should get another sales bump when this hero handset is released in the United States this month.
Apple on the other hand, only sells smartphones running a single operating system, its in house made iOS, and they are all part of the iPhone family.
An additional complication in distinguishing between smartphones and feature phones is that over time the capabilities of new models of feature phones can increase to exceed those of phones that had been promoted as smartphones in the past.
Technologist Michael Saylor has referred to the newer mobile app enabled smartphones as “app phones” for their distinction from the earlier smartphone models.
In addition to competing for the consumer’s cash in carrier stores, the two companies are also involved in a wide spread patent based legal battle that’s being actively fought over four continents in 10 different countries.
TheiPhone 4S continues to be the single best selling phone at most carriers, while Samsung’s Galaxy S III line is poised for its own breakout success.
SOURCES TechCrunch TAGS AppleiPhoneSamsungSamsung Galaxy SSamsung Galaxy S3Smartphone NEXT: Asymco: Samsung and Apple earned 99% of all smartphone profits last quarter.
Carli Saunders is a business journalist based in Sydney, Australia. Carli has a passion for financial markets and breaking news stories and loves writing about business news, stock market, and economic opinions that matters most to its audience. Carli spends a lot of time discovering and researching latest financial markets and industry news stories in order to make sure the latest and greatest stories are brought to you first on BigBoardNews.com.
