Blip in an overall market decline
The £100 price cut in the retail price of the 8GB iPhone reported at the end of our article on Carphone Warehouse (CPW) ten days ago has cleared the shelves at O2 as well as CPW. It remains to be seen whether they intend to restock or to wait for the 3G model, promised in June.
Apple shipped 1.7m iPhones globally in Q1, down from 2.3m in Q4 2007, which market surveyor Strategy Analytics blamed on high European prices and limited supply.
The fire sale of 8GB models will not affect shipping figures for Q2, as they were existing stock. To put it into perspective, Apple’s share of the global phone market dropped a tenth of a point to 0.6 per cent.
Drop in the ocean
The mobile phone market as a whole declined 14.2 per cent from Q4 2007, from 329.1 to 282.3 million units. Shipments for Q1 were up 14 percent YOY, however.
Nokia still dominates, rising three-tenths of a point to 40.9 percent. Samsung jumped from 14.1 percent in Q4 2007 to 16.4 percent, while shipping the same volume in both quarters.
Motorola’s free fall continued, to 9.7 percent from 18.4 percent in Q1 2007. Sony Ericsson was down to 7.9 percent of the market from 9.4 percent in Q4 2007. Sony was overtaken by LG, which increased its market share from 7.2 percent to 8.6 percent.
LG was the only one of the top five to ship more phones (700,000 units) in the period. Nokia shipped 18 million units less, Motorola volume was down by 13.5 million and Sony by 8.5 million.
