When you compare Android phones to iOS phones in general, Android beats the pants off Apple in terms of market share. According to IDC, 75 percent of smartphones shipped in Q3 2012 had some version of the Android OS installed, while just 14.9 percent ran Apple’s iOS. Now that sure is some hefty dominance.
And yet, there’s no single phone that has overtaken the iPhone all by itself. The closest one has come was this past quarter, when the Samsung Galaxy S III (“the next best thing is already here”) sold 18 million units and the iPhone 4S sold 16.2 million units, according to Strategy Analytics. That looks like a win right there, but the iPhone 5 came out near the end of the same quarter and more than made up the gap with 6 million units of its own.
Is the Data Presented Properly?
Now, you might argue that if you can combine the iPhone 4S and 5 sales, you should be able to combine, say, Galaxy S III and Galaxy S II sales. Fair enough, but why stop there? Why not combine all Samsung smartphones? In Q2 2012, at least, Samsung accounted for 32.6 percent smartphone shipments, according to Statista.
The point is, you can manipulate statistics a lot of ways to get the results you want. If the period measured were the weekend following the iPhone 5’s release, that smartphone would certainly be the most popular. To get a true picture of a phone’s popularity, there must be a fair comparison. Even Strategy Analytics says that it expects the iPhone 5 to outsell the Galaxy S III for all of Q4 2012, so the fact that the S III outsold the 4S in its last days as Apple’s flagship is somewhat irrelevant.
The ideal situation for comparison would see two rival phones on the same release schedule that were close in popularity. The Galaxy S III had – and still has – a marketing blitz behind it unlike any other Android phone. That compares well with the iPhone, but its summer release date wasn’t synchronized well with the iPhone’s autumn launch.
If Samsung really wants the crown of “best-selling smartphone,” it should compete head-to-head with Apple’s next iteration of the iPhone. Apple typically releases iPhones in early fall. Samsung has already denied a March 2013 announcement for a follow-up Galaxy S model, so it will likely be later. Although Samsung has announced previous Galaxy S phones in the spring for summer release, a slight delay to a fall release isn’t out of the question.
Could we see a direct Galaxy S IV versus iPhone 6 war in 2013? Here’s to hoping.
