Apple making progress, patent duelling with Samsung

Apple are always in the news but over the last few days they have hit the headlines slightly more than usual. Sasha did mention it yesterday but I found a WSJ article which explained the implications of the Samsung Court ruling very well. In case you missed it, Apple lost a legal ruling which has banned them from selling certain models in the US.


The article titled Ruling Won't Break Apple's Skin explains it better than I ever could.


"Yet only devices using AT&T's network fall under the ruling. And only a handful of older models are affected. What's more, only two of the affected models, the iPhone 4 and the "3G version" of the iPad 2, are still being sold. Slightly more than a third of Apple's overall sales are in the U.S. And, according to a survey by Consumer Intelligence Research Partners, half of iPhone 4s and two-thirds of 3G iPad 2s sold in the U.S. are on AT&T's network. Respectively, they generate 13% and 14% of U.S. iPhone and iPad sales, according to CIRP.


Putting all those numbers together suggests that, at most, the ban impacts roughly 2% of Apple's sales, based on March-quarter numbers."


The stock was only down 0.93% yesterday which was probably more to do with a weaker market than the news itself. If you saw the headlines and felt a bit anxious I hope this explanation has sorted that out.

The other news I saw with regards to Apple was positive and related to market share in the US. comScore who are the leaders in measuring smartphone data released the following table on their website. Click here if you want to read the full release.

Basically, because of strong demand for the iPhone 5 they are actually gaining market share in the US. This is important to note because the US market is the most sophisticated when it comes to smartphones so their opinion matters. Although the platform IOS is well behind Android, the iPhone is comfortably the most popular phone in The States and that market share is growing.


What I also found interesting was that smartphone penetration in the US was only 58%. If there is still a lot of room to grow in this market, the potential in developing markets must be mind blowing. If you remember Sasha covered all of this yesterday with that Ericsson report.


Yes, there are huge market share wars between the smartphone manufacturers but people forget that there is still a lot of room out there for these players to grow. This town is still big enough for the two of them.