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NEARLY 90% OF people in Brazil have Android phones, and almost none of them have Apple’s iPhones, according to Kantar.
That astonishing statistic, and the equally dramatic news that Android has more than 75% of smartphone market share in Argentina, Brazil, and Mexico, gives you an idea of the headwinds facing Apple’s new iPhone 6 when it launches in September.
These are modern economies with millions of phone users but they also have huge numbers of poor consumers. Few of them will be able to afford the iPhone 6.
Yet, Apple is about to go to war with an iPhone 6 that will likely cost nearly $700 per unit. It will be competing in markets where a slew of $100 and $200 large-format Androids are about to be launched.
The Kantar numbers suggest that even Microsoft’s Windows phones actually have a greater market share than Apple’s iOS mobile devices in some Latin American countries.
eMarketer has slightly different numbers, but even then it’s clear that no matter how you measure it the stats show iOS is an also-ran mobile operating system in many modern but still developing economies. In Spain, for instance, Android’s market share declined from 93% to 87% mostly because it lost share to Windows, not Apple.
This is important because as more and more of the world comes online via mobile, all the growth is going to be in poor countries. Apple doesn’t even have distribution in some of these countries. It only just opened its first store in Brazil last year.
The term “poor” here is being used in the relative, macroeconomic sense as a contrast to the “rich” countries of North America and Western Europe. To put this in perspective, per capita income in the US is about $47,000 annually. In India it’s $3,560, according to the World Bank. That is significant because an iPhone in the U.S. costs $700. iPhones are nearly $1,200 in Brazil and more expensive than the US in every other country where they are sold. In Brazil or India, you’ll have to save more than a month of your wages to afford one.
If you’re an Apple user, you can say one good thing about Android: It sure helped bring down the average selling price of an iPhone, if only briefly. Average iPhone prices have gone beneath $550 since Apple began selling the iPhone 4 and iPhone 4S as entry-level models at discount prices in places like India.
Arguably, the iPhone 4 range is Apple’s competitor to cheaper Androids: It’s the iPhone you can get if you want to pay $0 down and walk out of the store with an Apple.
But now there are questions about that strategy, too. Those iPhone 4 models will be going up against the new Android One, Google’s bare-bones Android for India, which will cost $100.
There are a range of Chinese companies undercutting the bottom of the market with cheap Android copies of Samsung phones. Many of them, particularly Android One, are likely to be much better value for money than an iPhone 4 or — if you’re poor and every penny counts — an iPhone 6. The cheap, modern Androids have big screens and the same apps and features as the older iPhones.
Apple’s strategy is not to care about the bottom of the market. Apple has always wanted to dominate only the most profitable, high-end section of the market where all the profits are.
The strategy appears to be working, for now. Samsung may get hurt most in the short-run — why bother with an expensive Samsung Android when a cheap Xiaomi Android will do? But a cheaper, better Android would be more of a threat to Apple than Samsung is now.
What is the point of a mobile platform that only 20% of the world uses? Most developers want their apps exposed to as many people as possible, not a select few. And why would you want a tiny old 3.5-inch iPhone 4 when you can get a 5-inch Android for the same price?
That is why it would not be a surprise to see the iPhone 5C get offered at a further discount once iPhone 6 launches. Its screen is larger than the iPhone 4 series, and it’s still a pretty good phone. But it probably won’t fall as far as $100 for most buyers — and that is where it will be interesting to see how Apple responds.
- Jim Edwards
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I’m rich and I cant afford it , or should I say I’ve better things to do with my money than pay twice as much as I need to for a disposable piece of technology
Totally agree, I bought a samsung s3 in 2012 for 560 euro, If it lasts me another year then I’d consider it worth it.
A Samsung is probably more overpriced than an iPhone. I wouldn’t wrap a sandwich in that kind of plastic.
Full of malware those android phones are…
Bought a Cubot P9 5″ Smartphone from Ebay a few days ago €70 including P&P. Has android jelly-bean, two cameras, 2 sim slots…dual core processors……and has a screen keyboard that big fingers can use…It does everything I want for a 10th of the price of an Iphone
Bought a unlocked LG2 phone from Groupon for 300 a few weeks ago…Well worth every cent and IMHO much better than any Iphone.
A lot of people missing the class element here!
Good point
And it will be a bunch of crap that will last 6 months
I’ve had android phones for years and nothing has ever happened to them…Your talking is just plain ignorant. You think because it’s an Apple iPhone it wont break or it can’t be defective? lmao
You have an android phone, oh sorry, cant afford a proper phone eh ?
History 101: Every empire crumbles. Apple will be no different.
Current facts, apple will not worry about this rubbish report, they will sell more than enough phones, in fact they have ordered, from foxconn, an inordiante number which will mean iphone 6 will easily sell in record numbers. Tales of an apple demise have been spoken about endlessly by such as yourself. Their asset base in money is now over $160 billion, going under ? Lol
Ye with all that money they’re deffo going down lol :-)
Oh no! Won’t somebody think of the multi gajillion dollars corporation?? :P
Were they not supposed to release some budget iPhones to compete with the €100-200 Android models?
It was the 5c
That was the ‘C’ ones…but Apple’s interpretation of ‘budget;’ is not anything near as price-friendly as the budget Android handsets.
Apple can survive for so long based on luddite/fanboy users buying each new handset yearly for massive percentage markups but even that will fall away and is not sustainable.
I guess their idea of a budget phone is a lot different to everybody elses.
Fozz, I have an iphone and guess what, I’m not a luddite.
The C was not meant to be for Cheap, if you thought so you were misled by the fantasy that Apple would make a cheap product as good as their expensive ones.
Apple doesn’t make cheap products. They live off the hype their products have and target only the highest margins.
No, they never said that, only the press said it
No it wasn’t. Apple have never produced a budget phone
Well said, its just continuous iphone envy from the android droids
Its not hype, its quality. Proven and undeniable
Apple don’t do budget
I have a feeling that Apple will care more about revenues than numbers of phones sold. Change the market share graph to reflect share of revenue rather than share of units and Apple’s position looks a lot healthier. And that’s before you consider how much somebody who earns $47,000 a year spends on apps and other content relative to someone who earns $3,500.
Al that said, Apple do need a big idea to keep the high-earners sweet. Should one of the alternative OSes start eating in to that pool, they will really have a problem.
People aren’t stupid, that 47k p/a earner will need to update his/her phone eventually, they won’t pay a 300% premium for a logo.
” they won’t pay a 300% premium for a logo”
People pay many times that premium for logos all the time. Designer clothes, some car manufacturers, etc.
Yes, and the quality of those designer products is far superior to the non-designer range.
However in this case the quality of the new generation of Chinese phones is more than a match for the iPhone.
Ooo, I’m sure apple are really scared
“Android is better, na, na, na, na-na.”
OK now I’ve said it. I know it’s what you are all thinking.
Quite frankly I’m more interested in seeing what the mobile operators offer in upgrades rather than paying a full retail price for a phone.
I value my custom more than the phone companies and will switch if the incentive is there.
I find I get 2 years out of an Apple iPhone before the urge to upgrade hits. I don’t trust Android for malware, and stopped believing in privacy some time ago, preferring to believe in security instead.
Ah Paul, such a reasonable and logical statement! And so true. Nevermind, let the red thumb fandroid brigade vote you down :)
Emilio being an apple sheep is not logical(wrote on my I phone)
Apple all the way, security is more inportant that apps, and apple products work, no malware, no virses.
History just repeating itself,
Apple/microsoft
Wellsaid
I don’t worry too much about malware on phones or computers, long enough in the game now to know if something smells a bit fishy and steer clear of it. I’m content as an iSheep, I get replacement parts off eBay and don’t buy into getting shafted for expensive repairs, enjoy upgrading/restoring older hardware to work to the best of its ability. I admire the open source “home brew” friendly android ecosystem, I just decided to buy an iPhone and adapted to its limitations.. As I’m sure I’d be saying if I’d bought a HTC or Samsung! Can’t understand the rabid foamy-lipped fanboyism of any group.. It’s not a lifestyle choice after all.. Who wants to be defined by their phone!
Anyone who doesn’t pay attention to data security could be defined by their phone.
That’s a complete non-argument… Why would a developer make an app for a mobile platform only 20% of the world uses?
Well for a start 20% of the worlds population is still one billion people. Is the author honestly questioning why you would make a product or a service for a market of “ONLY” a billion people.
Secondly… You develop an app to make money either through selling it, advertising or collecting data on it’s users. Who is most likely to buy apps or the the products advertised within, consumers with disposable income… The kind of disposable income that someone who buys an iPhone is almost certainly to have. What use is data for consumers that have $100 US a week and spend all their money on staple goods.
Spot on, the reality is that the line of thought
“I buy an Android Phone because there are lots of free apps”
is mostly not something that will make a developer write non-free apps for Android!
Free apps get revenue through advertising, you have a popular free app on the world’s most popular mobile OS and it’s going to earn you multiples of what you’d get on a premium app, for an OS with only a fraction of the number of users.
true Andrew.
also “And why would you want a tiny old 3.5-inch iPhone 4 when you can get a 5-inch Android for the same price?”
because it fits in your pocket? as a phone should do or are we talking about tablets here? if so then move along to the next shelf.
a tiny iphone4 hahahahaha, how big are your pockets? guess we may all wear combats soon to carry bigger is better phones :/
complete disregard/illogic for usability. we all know nokias bricks got smaller then iphone went up a tad but thats as far as phones should really go, otherwise as i sad, buy a tablet.
and to add, many brazilians have iphones, they just buy them abroad, such as here before they return, theres also 2nd hand which we also buy here. they want them, everyone wants them but then you have the side that hates apple cos they can’t afford or refuse apples high prices, which is understandable but for all the newbies who got their first iPod years back, apple have always been a specialised machine for partIcular needs and were always expensive, they just they sort of expanded the line.
if you can’t afford it, stick with android or whatever but no need to knock something all because you can’t afford it. i never heard as much crap back in the 90s about this because these machines were rarely seen, there were no apple stores, no website, no 3mobile etc etc yet the world moved along on Windows 95 while Mac users kept on using them for their needs, at a price mind.
a lot A LOT of apps i see uploaded for android, really please don’t let them near the redesign of and OS. they should be banned from developing software products, its like a scrap book on there, very ugly.
What about the oneplus granted the invite system is a joke but they are shifting out a huge amount lately for 299euro for 64 it’s a amazing bit of hardware I myself have one and it’s excellent my partner who is a iPhone head is actually jealous and considering the change. With android L right around the corner I think it will complete even more against iOS
Any chance of an invite Daniel :)
Sign up to the forum and the Ireland thread will be sharing my invites there and to be honest there isent to many looking in the thread ! https://forums.oneplus.net/threads/members-from-ireland.1698/page-25. Bare in mind you need to use parcel motel.
It’s ironic people accuse people with iPhones of elitism and here you have to get invited to buy one. Nerd elitism.
At the end of the day all phone manufacturers have to pitch there product somewhere and nobody had yet or most likely never will invent the ultimate smart phone.
Nobody accuses iPhone owners of elitism.
iPhone owners themselves, however, do seem to think they’re elite.
wrong thinking Cpm, you’re the negative minded. best of luck with it.
Why would they want to hit the cheap market? To get bunch of phone sold making next to nothing on margins, and then getting nothing out of user who never buys music or apps?
A Chinese flyer leaked prices for the iPhone 6 (in China) according to it the phablet 5.5″ will be $1016! You can order a OnePlus One or an Xiaomi M3 for 1/3 that price.
That wasn’t meant to be posted as a reply to you, Daniel.
Dont nelieve all the crap that comes out of china, its usually rubbish like their phones
Where do you think the iPhone is made?
*facepalm*
I wonder if the author of this article can say where Kantar are getting their data from?
Are these sales figures? Useage statistics? Why is the data only limited to these countries … The stats seem pretty different from market leaders like DeviceAtlas and StatCounter.
Marx was correct ; Capitalism would eat itself tail first !
Marx and communism are basically both dead
There’s Greed, Utter Greed, Total Greed, and then there’s Apple.
Its called business, duh !
lol what its taken the iphone just to learn about apples prices? welcome on board, jump ship whenever you wish.
They sell refurbished hardware on the apple store, they should do the same with iphones. And it should be possible to easily unlock them when upgrading to a newer one so someone else can use it.
It’s easy to unlock your iPhone when your contract with your service provider is up. Takes minutes through iTunes.
Well said
Business Insider click bait. Sad that the Journal needs to repost nonsense of this ilk. Refer to any Macalope post for the past three years, or Canalyst report for all the refutation that’s necessary (and will be ignored, for Apple dissing is so much more entertaining and captures more eyeballs.)
I have an iPhone 5s .. First smartphone I had and I have to say it is a brilliant device … Better to go with the grain rather than against it ie. getting the iPhone which is deemed by the general population to be the most desirable phone to have
Another pointless article. Apple makes massive profits 7.7 billion last quarter and iphone sales were up 13% compared to same qtr last year. They will make big profits for a while to come no doubt about it but having no shares in apple it makes no difference to 99% if us. Just like whether they sell in Brazil or not. Thanks Journal.ie
its not Apples fault, Brazil protect their imports with high prices right across the board.
Fcuking fanboys. Do you think Tim Cook and the Android equivalents give a damn about you? Who cares what device you or anybody else uses? You are no better than religious zealots ramming their beliefs down your throat. Grow up.
Wish they would hurry up with ip6.. need to get one quick, Battery about to die…
ah but sure who cares about design when you’ve got the android store and all those dodgy free apps. itunes have them too mind but its more about duplicates, plagiarists which is also a problem.
if the world was built on android it would be in an even messier state.
This argument has been doing the rounds in tech circles for years. They came back from the brink many years ago and saved themselves. Love them or hate them Apple have revolutionised the world of mobile and tablets. The difference being they design their own hardware and software which creates a much more seamless user experience. Does not matter how great the new android is, it will eventually become clunky and buggy as its designed for many and varied phones. Apple platforms are secure, fast, and they work seamless with each other. How many times have you seen a window laptop onstage at a festival or a concert? Exactly my point.
What fruit markets do they get them apples from must be an expensive one
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