It seems the mainstream media is constantly reporting on the popularity of iPhones and iPads. And there’s a raging debate over Flash vs. HTML5 video because of them. But in the grand scheme of things, are these products really that popular, or is Apple simply brilliant at generating press? Well, I decided to dig up some numbers and find out.
Keep in mind that statistics on anything web related are never truly accurate. And on top of that, major companies are often very secretive when it comes to revealing actual product sales. But I tried to dig up the most reputable numbers I could find…and here they are:
- Number of iPhones sold: 41,153,000 (source Canalys)
- Number of mobile phones in the world: 800,000,000 (source Bloomberg)
- That gives iPhones 5% of the mobile market
- Of the top 20 mobile phone manufacturers, the number who build phones that support Flash: 19 (Apple is the only one who doesn’t, source Bloomberg)
- Number of iPads sold: 1,150,000 (source Chitika Labs)
- Number of netbooks sold, 2008 and 2009 combined: 50 million (source Gigaom)
- That gives the iPad 2% of the market. But then again everyone argues the iPad isn’t a netbook and it’s only a month old. Then again, the estimated sales for netbooks in 2010 is another 40 million units
- The number of Kindles sold to date: 1.5 million (source Amazon). The Kindle is also considered an iPad competitor
Take from these numbers what you will, but it sure seems the popularity of iPhones and iPads, in the grand scheme of things, is roughly equal to the popularity of Macs vs. PC’s, where it’s long been estimated that Windows owns around 85% of the market. Or in other words, Apple makes a lot of noise with their products, but their user-base (historically and currently) is an overwhelming minority.
By the way, just so you know, I’m not partial to any platform or device…I use “Mac stuff” and “Windows stuff” equally every day…whatever gets the job done.
Well Apple IS the largest mobile device company in the world.
http://bit.ly/cldoU9
Fred must not understand basic math. You nailed it right on, Dave.
I too use both Mac stuff and PC stuff. In fact, my first video NLE was the AVID 8000 Media Composer…on a MAC. ($120,000 I paid for it and 4 3-gig hard drives – stacked!) AVID controlled the NLE world. Then, Apple decided to compete with its best customer and came out with its own ‘Final Cut’ video editing software. Pissed AVID off so much they migrated the AVID to PC…and only recently went to making their great editing software available on either.
Apple blows a loud horn, but your figures don’t lie! (I’ll always be grateful to Apple, though, for forcing AVID to compete price-wise.)
Not sure exactly what the point of this article was.
What didn’t you break things down to show Apple’s popularity (marketshare?) compared to that of other CE manufacturers rather than against the market as a whole?
I’d lay odds that any other individual CE maker (device) has a similar (if not lower) marketshare.
Thanks Dave, This is really great information. Hype is so easy to create these days when you are one of the big boyz. I don’t use Apple products because they seem to have many limitations to me.
NatB
@John – The point wasn’t who had what market share among individual devices. The point was how many of your web site visitors might actually be using the devices…and based on those numbers…whether or not you should worry about providing video on your site specifically for them.
Dave, another interesting article. Do you have the links for your sources? I kept clicking all over to see what the source was but it was just plain text.
Although these numbers are interesting, Dave, I don’t think they answer the question you mention in your comment.
It doesn’t matter what percent of mobile phones are iPhones, but what percent of WEB-ENABLED mobile phones do, and what their web traffic is like.
The general consensus (sorry, no sources handy) is that iPhone users browse the web a lot more than people using Sidekicks or BlackBerries. And Android users are about the same.
So if you have a site with a lot of mobile browsing, you can check your analytics for the breakdown for operating systems and browsers and see if iPhone users are a noticeable market.
I have a Nexus One and before that I had various BlackBerries for years. Even though the Nexus One has webkit, I tend not to visit video heavy websites. A site like this, which has videos that one really wants to watch and listen to intently, doesn’t fit into my mobile browsing habits because I’m either on the road in a loud environment or in a bar or restaurant where I don’t want to be obnoxious watching a video. The few times I’m watching video on my phone is when it’s something I just shot myself to see if it’s worth sending to a friend or it’s a silly YouTube video to pass around.
So I think the type of web video your doing and the analytics for your user base might be more important than the number of iPhones in the world.
Flash 10.1 on Android is pretty cool. I haven’t used it for watching video much, but when I wanted to buy tickets for the movies for a discount at the movie theatre, enabling the desktop version of the site with Flash helped me make the right seating selections. Anyone with an iPhone or non-Flash device would have been stuck paying $1 more a ticket.