Research firm Gartner today released its results of worldwide mobile phone sales for the third quarter of 2011, once again revealing how delayed purchases ahead of the iPhone 4S resulted in a dip in unit sales and market share for Apple. According to the report, Apple's share of the total mobile phone market came in at 3.9% for the quarter, down from 4.6% in the previous quarter. The performance was strong enough, however, to maintain fourth place in the rankings behind Nokia, Samsung, and LG.
Apple shipped 17 million iPhones, an annual increase of 21 percent, but down nearly 3 million units from the second quarter of 2011 because of Apple's new device announcement in October. Gartner believes Apple will bounce back in the fourth quarter because of its strongest ever preorders for the iPhone 4S in the first weekend after its announcement. Markets such as Brazil, Mexico, Russia and China are becoming more important to Apple, representing 16 percent of overall sales and showing that the iPhone has a place in emerging markets, especially now that the 3GS and 4 have received price cuts.
Looking at the narrower smartphone market, which represented 26% of mobile phone sales during the quarter, iOS slipped from an 18.2% share in the second quarter to 15.0% in the third quarter, trailing market leader Android and Nokia's soon-to-be-defunct Symbian platforms. Notably, Android leapt to grab 52.5% of the smartphone market during the quarter, more than doubling year-over-year and up significantly from 43.4% just last quarter.
But even as Android surges to take more than half of the worldwide smartphone market by units, Apple continues to increase its share of mobile phone industry profits, with several studies showing that Apple currently takes in more than half of the industry's profits.
In another stark example of Apple's rise to dominance in profit share, Fortune yesterday published several charts from a new report from analysts at Oppenheimer & Co. The graphs show that while Apple's share of smartphone unit sales has somewhat stagnated over the past couple of years, its share of smartphone profits has soared to an estimated 65% during 2011. That trend is predicted to continue in 2012, with Apple pushing toward 70% profit share.
Wednesday October 29, 2025 4:22 am PDT by Tim Hardwick
Apple is about to drop iOS 26.1, the first major point release since iOS 26 was rolled out in September, and there are at least six notable changes and improvements to look forward to. We've rounded them up below.
Apple has already provided developers and public beta testers with the release candidate version of iOS 26.1, which means Apple will likely roll out the update to all compatible...
Friday October 31, 2025 1:40 pm PDT by Joe Rossignol
The upcoming iOS 26.1 update includes a small but helpful change for iPhones, and it could prevent you from running late to something important.
Specifically, when an alarm goes off in the Clock app, there is a new "slide to stop" control on the screen for turning off the alarm. On previous iOS 26 versions, there is simply a large "stop" button, which could be accidentally tapped.
The new ...
Monday October 27, 2025 7:55 am PDT by Joe Rossignol
The upcoming iOS 26.1 update includes a handful of new features and changes for iPhones, including a toggle for changing the appearance of the Liquid Glass design, "slide to stop" for alarms in the Clock app, and more.
Below, we outline key details about iOS 26.1.
Release Date
Given that Apple has yet to seed an iOS 26.1 Release Candidate, which is typically the final beta version, the...
Friday October 31, 2025 7:32 am PDT by Joe Rossignol
Apple has just given a strong indication that it will not be releasing any additional new Macs for the remainder of the year.
Apple's CFO Kevan Parekh dropped the hint during the company's earnings call on Thursday:On Mac, keep in mind, we expect to face a very difficult compare against the M4 MacBook Pro, Mac mini, and iMac launches in the year-ago quarter.Parekh essentially gave a heads up ...
Thursday October 30, 2025 4:42 am PDT by Tim Hardwick
Apple's iPhone development roadmap runs several years into the future and the company is continually working with suppliers on several successive iPhone models at the same time, which is why we often get rumored features months ahead of launch. The iPhone 18 series is no different, and we already have a good idea of what to expect for the iPhone 18 Pro and iPhone 18 Pro Max.
One thing worth...
Monday October 27, 2025 4:51 pm PDT by Juli Clover
Apple is designing an updated version of the Apple TV 4K, and rumors suggest that it could come out sometime in the next couple of months. We're not expecting a major overhaul with design changes, but even a simple chip upgrade will bring major improvements to Apple's set-top box.
Subscribe to the MacRumors YouTube channel for more videos.
We've rounded up all the latest Apple TV rumors.
...
Wednesday October 29, 2025 7:13 am PDT by Tim Hardwick
Rumors are stoking excitement for the next-generation iPad mini that Apple is reportedly close to launching. So what should we expect from the successor to the iPad mini 7 that Apple released over a year ago? Read on to find out.
Processor and Performance
Apple is working on a next-generation version of the iPad mini (codename J510/J511) that features the A19 Pro chip, according to...
Tuesday October 28, 2025 1:07 pm PDT by Juli Clover
Apple today provided developers and public beta testers with the release candidate versions of upcoming iOS 26.1, iPadOS 26.1, macOS Tahoe 26.1, tvOS 26.1, watchOS 26.1, and visionOS 26.1 updates for testing purposes. The RCs betas come a week after Apple released the fourth betas.
The new betas can be downloaded from the Settings app on a compatible device by going to General > Software...
Apple's iPhone 18 Pro models could be available in new rich and warm color option, according to a known leaker.
The Weibo user known as "Instant Digital" today suggested that next-year's iPhone 18 Pro models will be available in at least one of the following color options: Coffee, purple, and burgundy.
The iPhone XR, iPhone 11, iPhone 12, iPhone 14, and iPhone 14 Pro were all available in ...
Those marketshare reports always fail to include the iPod and the iPad, which are all part of the iOS ecosystem. If they actually included ALL iOS devices in those studies, the TRUTH would be revealed: that Apple completely dominates & decimates their competition.
The iPod and the iPad are not a phone. Only the iPhone is. Can you make calls with a iPod or iPad via a celluar network? Thought so.
Android is an excellent platform? We must have very different definitions of the word "Excellent".
Here we go again. Yes, some people prefer Android and some iOS en some others WP7. It's called personal prefference. Bassicly it is letting them pick the tool that they want to use to acomplish the same thing.
Both iOS,Android and WP7 are very good, and they both have their positive and negative sides. Who are you to judge someone just because they use a different platform...
Those marketshare reports always fail to include the iPod and the iPad, which are all part of the iOS ecosystem. If they actually included ALL iOS devices in those studies, the TRUTH would be revealed: that Apple completely dominates & decimates their competition.
Why include them? This is only about phones and based on that, Android marketshare can't be touched.
Those marketshare reports always fail to include the iPod and the iPad, which are all part of the iOS ecosystem. If they actually included ALL iOS devices in those studies, the TRUTH would be revealed: that Apple completely dominates & decimates their competition.
Yap, because the iPod touch is a very good smartphone, isn't?
Android is an excellent platform? We must have very different definitions of the word "Excellent".
Well, you also have a definition for smartphone or phone that includes iPod Touch and ipad, so yes, perhaps your definition of excellent may be also wrong
You do realize that the internal components of an Apple computer is the same as you'd find in any other computer, right? The hard disc, RAM, graphic cards etc are all bulk standard ( In fact, graphic cards found in Apple PCs are often inferior to their Windows PC counter parts )
The internal components of Megan Fox are the same as those of any other woman.
This saddest part of all this is I remember a time, not too long ago, when you were considered cool having iPhones, and MacBook Pros, etc......now everyone has one.....
you wanna be the only cool kid with the shiny toy so everybody likes you?
