Sales of the iPhone 5 appear to be slowing dramatically in
the UK and around the world. In what seems like a bid to drum up sales, for the first time I can
recall, my mobile provider is making unsolicited calls to remind that I am due
an upgrade and have the opportunity of getting my hands on an iPhone 5 as part of my
package. Previous it appeared I needed
to be best friends with the chairman of the mobile operator to get such an offer. Furthermore, according to the Wall Street
Journal, Apple has cut an iPhone 5 display manufacturing order by half citing
"weaker-than-expected demand." The display order, which was targeted
for the January to March quarter, was cut along with other key component
manufacturing in December.
Given the crowded marketplace that the smartphone arena has
become, it is only good business that there should be changes to manufacturing
orders. However, this data seems to
confirm that globally, Samsung is beginning to get the upper hand in sales of
smartphones in head-on competition with Apple.
With 1.3 billion smartphones in use worldwide by end of 2012 and 465
million Android smartphones sold in 2012. Google’s operating system has now
captured a 66% global market share. Samsung has
used the Android OS to drive sales with their latest smartphone the Galaxy SIII with shipments estimated to be 18 million units for the third quarter of 2012, while
smartphone and overall mobile device shipments are projected at 59 million and
106 million units respectively.
Apple is rumoured to be accelerating the launch of the iPhone 6
to combat this growing Korean threat and thus it is of little surprise that they are ramping
down iPhone 5 production to make way for a newer model. Clearly being sued by Apple is good
commercial business for Samsung since it has crystallized the belief that the
once mighty Apple may have a worthy competitor in the form of Samsung. Litigation can have unexpected consequences and certainly it seems it may be the case that Apples lawyers are better at marketing Samsung's products than helping their own side win.
