IHS iSuppli is reporting this morning that for the first time in 14 years, Nokia won't be known as the cellphone leader as Samsung is set to take that crown for 2012. The report also notes that after being a neck-to-neck race with Apple in 2011, Samsung has decisively pulled ahead of Apple with a wide range of Android phones.
The report goes on to state that the Samsung Duopoly represents the dominant force in the smartphone market, with the two companies accounting for 49 percent of shipments in 2012, up from 39 percent in 2011.
In the bigger picture, it would be interesting to see a direct comparison between Q4 sales of the iPhone 5 vs. the latest Galaxy SIII. Yes, Samsung is the leader in quantity just based on the sheer number of phone models that they have in the market. But what about Samsung's profits picture?
In terms of pure profit, I'm sure that Apple's iPhone 5 will beat the Samsung Galaxy SII in Q4 2012 if the stats were ever made public. Just take a look at Apple's stats from Statista that recently showed that Apple acquired profits of 41.9 billion through the last four quarters which happened to be 7 billion more than the combined net profit of Microsoft, Google, Facebook, Amazon, Yahoo and eBay. How's that for a more meaningful stat. In fact, the iPhone alone brings in more profit than all of Microsoft.
Statistics are important but the data can be manipulated to slant a particular way that a marketer is aiming for. Samsung may end up the king of the cellphone market in 2012 but they won't be the king of profits for the industry. Apple will be the one smiling on that front.
