Chinese customers look at an iPhone 6 smartphone at an Apple Store in Yichang city, central Chinas Hubei province, 16 December 2014.
When Apple first entered the smartphone market, its late co-founder Steve Jobs indicated that he would be happy snagging at least 1% of the existing mobile phone market. Seen by some as a bit of false humility on the part of Apple in the iPhone's early days, it turns out that Jobs' strategy of focusing on profit over market share was spot on.
According to a new report, Apple's iPhone now boasts 92% of the total operating income among the world's top smartphone makers, despite the fact that the iPhone itself sells an estimated 14% of the world's smartphones (compared to about 25% from Samsung).
"We have done this quarterly report for several years and we base it on phone only sales (i.e., excluding sales from iTunes or other services tied to the phones)," Michael Walkley, Managing Director at Canaccord Genuity, the firm that published the report, told Mashable. "We collect the data from quarterly public reports from leading smartphone OEMs."
In Canaccord Genuity's report, that staggering 92% figure for the iPhone, termed as "operating profit value share by OEM (original equipment maker)," is contrast against 15% for Samsung and -4% for Microsoft.
As for the rising China smartphone players, the story is still unfolding. "[W]e exclude the large private Chinese companies," says Walkley "but we note companies such as Xiaomi are attempting to gain market share and make profits longer-term on selling apps and services and thus likely have limited if any profits on their smartphone only sales."
And for those keeping tabs on the Asia market in general, Canaccord Genuity's report, ranks China (22%) as second only to North America (32%) in total iPhone sell-through (devices actually sold to consumers), followed by Europe (17%), the rest of the Asia Pacific (16%) and then Japan (7%).
Finally, the firm's report also confirms that Apple's decision to enter the phablet space was the right one.
"We anticipate continued high-end smartphone market share gains for the larger screen iPhone 6 devices," reads the report, "as our surveys indicate a greater mix of Android smartphone consumers are switching to the iPhone 6 smartphones than in the iPhone 5 series launches."