Roughly 1,000 companies make smartphones. Just one reaps nearly all the profits.
Apple Inc. recorded 92% of the total operating income from the world’s eight top smartphone makers in the first quarter, up from 65% a year earlier, estimates Canaccord Genuity managing director Mike Walkley. Samsung Electronics Co. took 15%, Canaccord says.
Apple and Samsung account for more than 100% of industry profits because other makers broke even or lost money, in Canaccord’s calculations.
Events last week highlighted the lopsided financial picture. Apple is asking suppliers to make a record number of new iPhone models. Meanwhile, Samsung forecast disappointing profits, HTC Corp. reported a quarterly loss, and Microsoft Corp. wrote down 80% of the value of the smartphone business it acquired from Nokia Corp. last year.
Apple’s share of profits is remarkable given that it sells less than 20% of smartphones, in terms of unit sales. The disparity reflects its ability to command much higher prices for its phones. Its rivals mostly use Google Inc.’s Android operating system, making it harder for them to distinguish their offerings, and prompting many to compete by cutting prices. Moreover, Samsung and HTC have made missteps in recent years.
Neil Mawston, executive director at market researcher Strategy Analytics, said many Android vendors are stuck between low-cost, high-volume brands such as China’s Xiaomi Corp. and Apple’s premium smartphones.
“There is that danger that you get trapped in the middle,” Mr. Mawston said. He estimates there are about 1,000 smartphone brands, including several hundred in China.
Even Samsung, which for a time found success making smartphones in all price tiers, is suffering in the now-crowded industry. Last week, the company said it expects profits to decline for a seventh straight quarter in the three months ended in June. Samsung appears to have misjudged demand for its newest phones, ordering too many Galaxy S6 phones and not enough of its higher-priced curved-screen cousin.
The results demonstrate the rapidly shifting fortunes in the smartphone business, which Apple transformed with the iPhone in 2007. At that time, Finland’s Nokia was grabbing about two-thirds of smartphone-industry profits, Canaccord estimates.
By the end of the decade, Apple and BlackBerry Ltd. joined Nokia in the top tier. By 2012, Apple and Samsung essentially split industry profits 50-50. Now, Apple stands far above the others. “That high-end tier has really shifted away from Samsung to Apple,” said Mr. Walkley.
To be sure, many smartphone makers have different strategies than Apple, which gets the lion’s share of its revenue by selling devices.
Microsoft and Xiaomi aim to profit after phones are sold, through paid app downloads, phone accessories or other add-ons. Samsung also makes money from making components that go into its phones, as well as those of rivals.
Representatives of Samsung and HTC didn’t comment. A spokesman for Microsoft declined to comment. A spokesman for China’s Huawei Technologies Co. said the company’s consumer business is profitable, and growing more so as the company sells more midprice and high-end smartphones.
Lenovo Group Ltd. in October bought unprofitable handset maker Motorola Mobility; executives have said they expect to turn Motorola profitable within six quarters.
An Apple spokeswoman declined to comment.
Canaccord’s data doesn’t include privately held companies including Xiaomi and India’s Micromax Informatics Ltd. Mr. Walkley said those companies’ profits—if any—are unlikely to alter the industrywide profit picture.
One key to Apple’s profit dominance: higher prices. Apple’s iPhone last year sold for a global average of $624, compared with $185 for smartphones running Android, according to Strategy Analytics. In its fiscal quarter ended March 28, Apple sold 43% more iPhones than a year earlier, at a higher price. The average iPhone price in the quarter rose by more than $60 to $659, on the strength of the larger-screen iPhone 6 and 6 Plus models.
As the smartphone market matures and growth slows, it is starting to resemble the personal-computer business in some ways. Average PC prices have plunged, and most manufacturers struggle to eke out profits. But Apple captured more than half of industry profits last year, even though its Mac line accounted for only about six of every 100 computers sold, according to Bernstein Research.
Despite the changing leader boards of the past decade, some industry veterans say Apple’s profit crown looks more secure.
“The dominance of Apple is something that is very hard to overcome,” said Denny Strigl, former chief operating officer of Verizon Communications Inc. “Apple has to stumble somehow or another, and I don’t think that’s going to happen.”
