Has the smartphone market hit the rocks? A regular column on the information industries

摘要

There are several groups of players in the smartphone market, and their patterns seldom coincide. The least important from the perspective of this analysis are the network operators that have to market the handsets to their customers. Judging by their recent share prices, some are better at this than others, but the best that the international groups have been able to manage during 2018 has been to keep on an even keel, whereas some like Vodafone have suffered badly. Across the entire sector, revenues have typically risen during 2018, but profits have fallen heavily. To all intents and purposes, only two operating systems need be examined - iOS (Apple) and Android (most of the other vendors). Market share is not all that important when a market is growing rapidly as even a static share represents a significant increase in shipments, but if market growth slows then equipment vendors will be forced to compete to maintain market share and avoid a reduction in shipments.