Friday, November 13, 2009
Apple: From Zero to 17.1 Percent Smartphone Share in 2.5 Years
Lest there be any doubt that Apple’s iPhone is redefining the smartphone market, consider this: In under two and a half years, the device has managed to claim nearly a fifth of the worldwide market for smartphones.
According to new data released this week by Gartner, Apple shipped some 7.04 million iPhones in the third quarter–up from just 4.72 million phones in the same period a year ago–for a 17.1 percent share of the market.
Apple’s voracious appetite for NAND flash RAM has proven a boon to Toshiba. Discussing Apple’s latest earnings on a conference call with analysts Tuesday, company COO Tim Cook revealed that Apple and Toshiba have inked a flash memory deal worth half a billion dollars.
To the NAND flash memory business, Apple is a market maker and mover–and an increasingly insatiable one. In 2008, Samsung was forced to reduce its supply of 8GB-equivalent NAND flash chips to other customers to fulfill its obligation to Apple. What’s past is prologue. To wit, reports today claim Apple has placed an order for 100 million 8GB NAND chips from Samsung–an order so large it is reportedly causing a supply shortage.
