After issuing feature phone sales figures, market research firm Strategy Analytics has shared its report on profits made by smartphone manufacturers in 2016. As the tradition goes, Apple continues to rake in the most profit in the global smartphone market, with the report claiming a figure of 79.2 percent of the overall industry and $44.9 billion overall operating profit for last year.
Korea Herald cites the Strategy Analytics report to claim Apple’s global profits alone were at 79.2 percent, which is significant, but much less than in previous estimates, such as Q3 2016, when according to BMO Capital Markets it garnered 104 percent of the entire industry’s profits. These numbers highlights Apple’s abilities of maximising profit margins by minimising product cost and not competing on price, something that other OEMs haven’t been able to crack. The company also doesn’t have a budget or affordable smartphone lineup, with its cheapest phone being the iPhone SE.
In comparison, Samsung scored 14.6 percent of global smartphone industry profit in 2016, as per the latest Strategy Analytics report, and managed to rake in only $8.3 billion of operating profit last year – much credit for this goes to the Galaxy Note 7 fiasco. The entire smartphone industry is estimated to have $53.7 billion in profit.
While the numbers are great for Apple, as we mentioned it still shows a decline in profit share over the years. Apple’s upcoming iPhone 8 is also said to be a costly device to produce because of the rumoured introduction of expensive OLED displays, and other improvements in hardware. The company is scheduled to release three smartphones this year, and the most premium iPhone 8 is said to be priced north of $1,000 to keep Apple’s profit balance intact.
