In my past post I pointed it out that Tomi Ahonen had in 2010 said that Apple’s market share peak among smartphones, and among all handsets, on an annual basis, was being witnessed.
And he also said in 2010 that the decline in unit sales would have started in the same year 2010.
None of these were true. But let’s see how this worked out, shall we?

IPHONE MARKET SHARE AMONG SMARTPHONES:

The iPhone peak in smartphone market share apparently took place in 2012, two years later that Tomi said “it had happened”. Although it has been a bumpy ride since, see it yourself:

Apple smartphones annual market share since year 2010 (as reported by Tomi Ahonen himself)











Yearsmartphones market share
201015.9 %
201119.1 %
201219.5 %
201315.5 %
201414.8 %
201516.1 %
201614.5 %
201714.3 %

So Tomi was off by two years at least.
It should also be noted that the year 2015 should in many cases be excluded from the graphs. As can clearly be seen we have a working curve in the statistics but the year 2015 is a spike in it. This is because year 2015 sales included the massive surge for large screen iPhones as a result of iPhone owners wanting to switch to a larger screen.
Tomi’s own forecast has been that Apple will drop to 13% market share for full year 2018. The trailing 4 quarter smartphone sales total indicates that this year the totals smartphone sales – i.e. the entire smartphone market – may be down from last year, which would mean that Apple unit sales need to be down too for that to happen.
However that has not been the case but sales seem to be flat or slightly up (more of that later). If so, that would result to an increase in market share among smartphones due to lower annual market size.

IPHONE UNIT SALES:

As said, iPhones unit sales did not peak in year 2010. So five years later – in 2015 – Tomi insisted the unit sales peak had already taken place in 2014 (four years later than his original forecast).
Unfortunately year 2015 sales ended up exceeding year 2014 sales (and by a massive margin) which made Tomi to be wrong again.

But has the peak finally taken place? Has Tomi finally been right (some 7 to 8 years too late)?
Well I took the liberty to gather the required numbers and this is where we stand:

Apple unit shipments annually since year 2010 (numbers from Apple quarterly results)











Yearunit sales (millions)
201047.49
201193.1
2012135.79
2013153.5
2014192.66
2015231.53
2016215.39
2017215.77

If we choose to accept that the year 2015 was an anomaly that took place due to the pent-up demand for large screen iPhones – Tomi’s 2010 forecast hasn’t taken place yet.
Furthermore: last 3 quarters (availability of current line of iPhones) Apple has sold 170.8 million devices compared to 170 million for the same period of time a year ago, which indicates basically flat, slightly up, year-on-year unit sales, adding one more year to the meter.

IPHONE MARKET SHARE AMONG ALL HANDSETS:

The peak on market share among all handsets was not only something Tomi in 2010 said had already happened, he also made it clear already in 2009 where Apple simply cannot grow:

The iPhone is priced like a Cadillac and will thus find a similar ‘niche’ market only. It cannot – cannot – cannot – ever cannot – become a ‘mass market’ phone with 10% or more of market share (of all phones) unless Apple totally revises its pricing strategy

–Tomi Ahonen, December 08, 2009 [1]

In that light I give you Apple market share among all handsets (smart and dumb) since year 2010:

Apple market share among all handsets (smart and dumb) since year 2010 (numbers from Gartner)











Yearmarket share
20103.0 %
20115.2 %
20127.8 %
20138.5 %
201410.3 %
201512.1 %
201611.4 %
201711.7 %

Apple topped the 10% of all phones without changing its pricing strategy.
(Wait – “without changing pricing strategy”? iPhone 5C? iPhone SE?)
Tomi says iPhone SE was “finally” the cheap iPhone that could help Apple to gain market share. I’m saying that Apple hadn’t changed pricing strategy since the iPhone SE was launched in March 2016 when Apple had already kept “10% or more” share of all phones for two years in row.
On the other hand iPhone 5C was launched late year 2013, but Tomi was very persistent that the iPhone 5C was not cheap enough to help Apple gain market share. Therefore year 2014 sales cannot be high due to a change in pricing strategy as Tomi said the pricing strategy didn’t change enough.

In addition to that – if we once again exclude year 2015 as an anomaly, market share among all handsets hasn’t peaked yet.

CLOSING:

We don’t know about the calendar year 2018 yet, it just might be that year 2017 was (finally) the “peak market share in all phones” year or “peak unit sales” year. Mere 7 years after Tomi reported the peak had already occurred.
Unfortunately, current trend is exactly the opposite; Apple is expected to increase the unit sales (slightly), increase the market share among all phones and maybe even increase their market share among smartphones.
Time will tell.

REFERENCES:

[1] http://communities-dominate.blogs.com/brands/2009/12/us-west-coast-drunk-on-iphone-yes-but-android-is-not-the-answer.html