Since the industry began in 1983. Apple, which entered the mobile phone market just two years, is struggling to keep up with overwhelming demand for its iPhone.
Mr. Modoff believes the iPhone and the BlackBerry, nicknamed the CrackBerry, will continue to win more market share from long-established players such as Nokia, Motorola and Sony Ericsson. He predicts the industry’s profits this year will grow in significant number. The iPhone is a major contributor to Apple’s overall profits, although the company refuses to disclose exactly how much money it makes from the device.
Tim Cook, Apple’s chief operating officer, this week highlighted the success of the phone when the company reported profit of $1.23bn (£747m) for the three months to the end of June.
“The demand has been staggering almost in every country that we’ve shipped in,” Mr. Cook said.
Here are some researches got to say,
Carolina Milanesi, research director at mobile phone research house Gartner, said: “The iPhone is hugely popular with customers, and it’s also massively profitable.
“They have completely disrupted the market in less than three years, it is really impressive.”
The startling rise of iPhone and BlackBerry devices is hammering all the established mobile phone makers.
Nokia, the world’s largest mobile phone maker, last week warned that it will fail to increase its market share this year due to rampant competition. On the same day Sony Ericsson, once regarded as the most technologically advanced mobile phone maker, slumped to its fourth consecutive quarterly loss. Both companies’ are desperately slashing jobs in order to free up cash to revamp their tired portfolios to compete with the iPhone in the so-called Smartphone sector and push into application stores.
Ms Milanesi says that even if rivals players make phones that are technically better than the iPhone, for example Nokia’s N97 and Palm’s Pre, they are starting very much on the back foot in terms of brand recognition and consumer appeal.
“You just can’t stand still in phones,” she says “People can’t even remember the names of phones which were popular just six months ago.
“Sony Ericsson was once cool like the iPhone, but it has got to act fast or it will get left behind,” she says. “Do you remember the catch-phrase Hello Moto?,” Ms Milanesi asks of a recent Motorola advertising campaign. “No, and nor does anyone else.”
Motorola has suffered the greatest fall from grace of all the established players. The company, whose RAZR model sold 110m units and was named the 12th greatest gadgets of the past 50 years by PC World, made a $509m loss in the first three months of the year. Motorola is planning to revive its reputation with a series of handsets based on Google’s Android operating system. The lure of the phone is also disrupting the mobile phone operator market, with the company that secured the rights to the phone outperforming its competitors in most markets.
In the UK, O2, which holds the exclusive rights to the phone until September, is the only mobile phone operator to increase its market share.
Rival T-Mobile is so desperate to stem the tide of its customers defecting to Orange that is snapping up SIM-free phones from mainland Europe to offer to customers threatening to leave.
Matt Hatton, analyst at Analysis Mason, said: “No other phone has the emotional pull of the iPhone; the BlackBerry almost has it, but only among corporate customers
“People may buy a Palm Pre with their brains, but they are buying the iPhone with their hearts.”
