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Canaccord: Apple took home 93% of mobile profits last quarter

By
Philip Elmer-DeWitt
Philip Elmer-DeWitt
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By
Philip Elmer-DeWitt
Philip Elmer-DeWitt
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February 9, 2015, 2:49 PM ET
Chart: Asymco.com

How did Apple, with 20% of the global smartphone market last quarter, manage to rake off 93% of the profit?

The math, as Canaccord’s T. Michael Walkley figured it in a note to clients Monday, is pretty simple:

  • Apple sold 74.5 million iPhones at an average selling price of $698
  • Samsung shipped the same number of smartphones — plus 20 million dumb phones — at an ASP of $206 apiece.

.

Nobody else is making any money to speak of. Microsoft’s smartphones ended up with -2% of the profit, if you can imagine that. BlackBerry, Lenovo, Sony, LG and HTC were all lucky to break even.

“This is demoralizing,” wrote phoneArena’s Daniel P., speaking for everybody but Apple.

Below: The two columns in Walkley’s spreadsheet that had people scratching their heads Monday.

Canaccord inset

Click to enlarge.

Follow Philip Elmer-DeWitt on Twitter at @philiped. Read his Apple AAPL coverage at fortune.com/ped or subscribe via his RSS feed.

About the Author
By Philip Elmer-DeWitt
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