New data shows Samsung continues to lead the Android profitshare as well as the Android marketshare, with many distant contenders, but Apple continues to dominate the overall mobile profitshare.
Counterpoint Research have released their latest quarterly data on the smartphone industry and they reveal that in the face of an overall downtrend in mobile profits of 11% Year-on-Year, Samsung and Huawei were the only two brands able to grow their business.
The financial research company also revealed a chart of quarterly profits by the top six mobile brands, and reveal that Apple and its portfolio of only premium smartphones maintains a seemingly insurmountable ~66% profitshare; a 4:1 lead over its nearest competitor which remains Samsung.
Meanwhile, Samsung has lead the Android market in sales effectively since the operating system's introduction a decade ago, and the Korean conglomerate has also managed to maintain profit leadership on the OS too at 17% of the Android profits in Q3 2019.
In order, Huawei (~10%), Oppo (~5%), Vivo (~5%), and Xiaomi (~1%) all follow Samsung for profitshare as the remaining statistically-significant brands. All Chinese, and in fact Oppo and Vivo are both owned by the same parent company, BBK Electronics, and Oppo also owns OnePlus and Realme.
It is important to note that this chart plots profitshare, as a portion of overall mobile profits, not marketshare which is overall mobile sales. Xiaomi is one of the most popular brands in the world but the company maintains a strict <5% profit rule on all its devices (to drive growth), while Apple sells about 2/3 as many devices as Samsung but makes far more money off each one (due to high prices and lower costs).
Counterpoint research predicts that Apple's profitshare will further increase in the current Q4 2019 due to the holidays (where Apple has seen huge jumps before while Samsung sees huge dips), and also that 5G may increase overall profits in the year to come, with many customers seeing it as incentive to upgrade.
Source: Counterpoint Research
