VisionMobile: Mobile Internet Market Trends in 2012: Mobile Phone Winners

VisionMobile has released its 2012 mobile market trend assessment report. Below is the first part of the report: Major changes in the mobile phone market model

The following figure shows the current mobile phone market share. There are many players with different performances, but the data cannot tell us more secrets about the mobile phone market.

In 2011, the smartphone market share reached 30%, with global shipments of 483 million units

Smartphone sales vary significantly between regions. In Q2 2011, smartphones accounted for the majority of mobile phone sales in North America (63%) and Europe (51%).

Android is the mainstream smartphone operating system, and Samsung and HTC benefit the most from the Android ecosystem (Q4 2011)

Android changes the mobile phone market structure. Samsung and HTC benefit, Nokia, Motorola, and Sony are challenged, low-cost assemblers quickly enter the market, and any Internet company can make mobile phones.

The profits of the mobile phone industry are monopolized by companies with highly customized value chain designs. Samsung has gained a good share by integrating mobile phone hardware, and Apple has gained the most profits from integrating everything from silicon to the cloud. The rest of the commodity modularization market is occupied by assemblers.

Highly customized value chain design drives rapid growth, and healthy profits can be invested more in innovation, product development and marketing.

Modular value chains lead to competitive disadvantages, while closed or tightly integrated OEMs can bring competitive advantages

OEM echelons in the post-Android era: innovators, followers, and assemblers

1. Innovator: Unique product experience, high-end price
2. Fast Followers: Differentiated Product Experience
3. Assemblers: product homogeneity, price competition
4. Mass production of feature phones: targeting developing markets

New Role of OEMS 2012 OEMs Pyramid Structure

Redrawing the Mobile Competition Map 2005 – 2012

Key lessons from competition in the Dell model era, the assembly and price competition era:

– The basis of competition is the size of the ecosystem
– Android attracts market investment
– The way to monetize Android is speed and vertical integration
– RIM, Nokia, Sony need to adapt to new rules of the game