10/06/2008, 10:25am, EDT
Monday, October 6thiPhone 3G now 17% of US smartphone market
The iPhone 3G's launch propelled Apple to the top of the US smartphone market in the summer and near the peak of the smartphone ranks in the US, according to NPD Group data. The phone outsold the BlackBerry Curve, BlackBerry Pearl and Palm Centro in the June through August window and used the spike generated by the launch to give all iPhones about 17 percent of the US smartphone business from January through August, or more than one in six smartphones sold in the country.
The figures are targeted at typical sales, however, and don't include corporate sales that often favor BlackBerries and Windows Mobile devices in the US.
Researchers at NPD nonetheless describe the iPhone 3G as potentially damaging sales at carriers rivaling AT&T. About 30 percent of all iPhone 3G buyers during the summer period had switched from another US carrier to pick up Apple's hardware. Almost half of this group, or 47 percent, were converts from Verizon; 24 percent were T-Mobile users, while 19 percent were from Sprint.
The iPhone and its competitors helped push down the average selling price of a smartphone in the US down from $236 a year ago to $174 today.
No mention has yet been made of specific iPhone sales estimates or a breakdown of sales by model, though Apple is now thought to have neared or reached the 10 million unit mark for total sales since mid-2007.
Filed under: iPhone, industry
Other story tags: BlackBerry, Windows Mobile, Palm, Centro, Curve, Pearl
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yawn
Give us some "real" numbers, not a segment of numbers. Basically this is "Apple's iPhone sold to 17% of consumer purchasers". As it states, it doesn't take into account corporate (what is the iPhone's penetration there?). It is also sales, not market share (as many in the computer marketshare wars will tell you, sales != user base).
Its just another story like "Apple's laptops sell better at brick and mortar stores!" which also doesn't take corporate accounts into consideration.
"real" numbers...
Who truly cares about numbers or market share? It seems to me that the public is always looking for these type of subjective numbers in order to feel good about a purchase... I have had my iPhone Day 1 of its release, dropped my VZW contract and I have never looked back. So for the folks like me who enjoy their iPhone 2.5G or the their 3G version, market shares (real numbers or else) are truly insignificant.
I have been using the Mac since 1989 around the time that Apple was left for dead; I used to hear all this Mac's "Small Market Share" non-sense, well here we are today. Strangely enough from my personal experience, for the people that are talking about iPhone small market shares are the same people that are truly inquisitive about it and at the same time are GREEN with envy...
""real" numbers, not a segment of numbers"...BUNK!