Market share: Apple, Samsung and the seven dwarves

Smartphones passed 50% of all mobile phones sold on earth some time in the last month or two. With that in mind, talking about 'smartphone market share' has become pretty irrelevant: what really matters is share of phones sold, since the great majority of phones sold in the next few years will be smartphones. 

With that in mind, I offer two charts of the state of the industry today. The first is for Apple alone. In Q4 2012, it had 11% of all phones sold on Earth, the highest it has ever had. Share of smartphones, the legacy statistic, was stable over the cycle, as it has been for several years. (NB: these are not adjusted for Apple's 'short quarter', so the Q4 2012 number is skewed down.)

The second chart shows the context: the utter dominance of the handset business by Apple and Samsung. As should be obvious, Apple's lock on the high-end of the market has disproportionate effects on share of revenue and profit. ​

It occurred to me ​at MWC, incidentally, that one could characterise the Android market as 'Samsung and the Seven Dwarves': this may show why.