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With 8.7% market share, Apple has 75% of cell phone profits

By
Philip Elmer-DeWitt
Philip Elmer-DeWitt
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By
Philip Elmer-DeWitt
Philip Elmer-DeWitt
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February 3, 2012, 8:20 AM ET

Between them, Samsung and Apple are sucking up 91% of the winnings



Click to enlarge. Source: Asymco.com

Asymco‘s Horace Dediu on Friday updated his quarterly review of mobile phone profits, and the news for everybody but Apple (AAPL) just gets worse.

As the iPhone’s share of the market in terms of units shipped has grown from 3% in second quarter of 2010 to 8.7% last quarter, Apple’s share of the profits has swelled from 39% to 75%.

Dediu’s chart of the eight largest manufacturers above shows this most clearly.

Only five are seeing any kind of profit at all in mobile telephony. Samsung, with a 16% profit share, comes closest to Apple. Nokia (NOK), Research in Motion (RIMM), and HTC are just scraping by. Motorola (MOT), LG and Sony (SNE), which bought out Ericsson last month, are still in the red.

Remember: We’re talking about all mobile phones, not just smartphones. And the entire worldwide market, not just the U.S. This doesn’t bode well for the manufacturers who have hitched their wagon to Google’s (GOOG) Android or Microsoft’s (MSFT) Windows Mobile 7.

For more of Dediu’s charts, click here.

About the Author
By Philip Elmer-DeWitt
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