iPhone sales

Apple iPhone sales in pictures. Please note that these are calendar years.

iPhone sales per quarter

iPhone models sold

Apple does not separate iPhone 3G and iPhone 3GS after iPhone 3GS introduction. The assumed sales of iPhone 3G is 5% after iPhone 3GS introduction. The share of iPhone 3G is a pure guess, if you have data for that please leave a comment.

Why Operators are important in Mobile

Everyone has a mobile phone nowadays. being either "dumb" or "smart", it follows you everywhere. Most of us have several phones and when we change clothes we pick up a different phone with us. That little device and its user interface and user experience are personal and important to us.

The little devices we carry are only a very small, little, tiny piece of the figure. The complete figure is the biggest machine in the world, the telecommunications network. The big machine connects you with virtually every person in the world. Just put in the number or email address and you can communicate with (almost) every person in the world. Really, with everyone. From China to South Africa to United States to practically everywhere.

If we look at the business, the mobile industry is a global giant. Following the Communities Dominate Brands blog by Tomi Ahonen, the total business is above trillion dollars per year. That is $1000 billion, or $1 000 000 000 000, or in scientific format 1E12. The business is bigger than that huge number, and it is growing fast. Do you understand the scale? Good, because I don't understand it completely. It is too big for me.

Let's go forward. Again, I refer to Tomi's blog and see that the phone business is worth around $150 Billion per year. That is a huge business alone. But to reach Trillion dollars, we need $850 billion more. And that $850 billion are the mobile operators. Of course, operators do need cell towers, base stations, antennas, switches, fibers and cables to make their business, but still the traffic is the dominant money-maker in the mobile industry.

Operators get most of their money from traffic as they charge voice, SMS, MMS and data. And that is the business in mobile, the traffic. The money is there. And where is the money, there is the power. This is something that can not be forgotten, it must be understood. Operators are the major players in the mobile industry.

You do not carry an operator in your pocket. The operator does not have a nice user interface and operating system. Only when your call cuts and traffic does not work, you notice the operator and blame it. And when your phone bill arrives, you know it is there. It is the giant lurking around the corner, making the machine work, and making money out of it.

There source behind the power of the operators is government and there are two main reasons for that.

1. The frequency bands are limited and they need to be allocated for different purposes. Governments do that allocation, and they give, hire, sell, auction or using some other principles give permissions to the operators to use the radio frequencies.
2. The governments have always been interested in communications between human beings. In the medieval ages they steamed letters open. Today requirements are different but still existing, like a law that requires the storage of the call data, or the law that makes the "wiretapping" obligatory, or the law that requires registration of the IMEI codes etc.
   

Now, the government power makes the market totally different. It is not the "free market", as explained in the economics textbooks, but it is well regulated and controlled. The government says who can enter the operator market and how much the initial investments for the network costs. Using the the words from business strategy textbooks, the entry barrier for the operator market is high. And it is not only money that buy you in, you also need to be "nice" in the eyes of the government that gives you the license.

The high entry barrier explains the profits and power of the mobile operators. Any phone maker must make their phones compliant with the network and that requires interaction with the operator and meeting them is inevitable. If a phone maker is small, operators do not care too much but probably let you try. And if a phone maker is making high profits, be sure the operators want their share.

Mobile social business future

Facebook, Twitter, Skype and similar services are popular. They report tens or even hundreds of millions of users. The companies running the services are funded by the investors expecting to get their money back some time, when these companies find out how to monetize the huge number of users engaged into their services. But you need to be careful, those services are certainly being watched.


The competition

Every mobile handset company has added social applications into their handset application store, or in most cases, preloaded the applications so those can be used out of the box. Mobile handset company works more or less with the mobile operator. Sometimes the operator says what software the phone has to have. And every company wants services that are popular and make people buy from them. This is very clear.

But who pays to bill here? Running the social service requires resources, ie. computer servers, software and maintenance engineers, managers, marketing staff and so on. This personnel and hardware is paid by the company which gets the money from investors. Running the service costs money. The little application in the phone is relatively simple piece of software that is not too difficult to make, ie. it is cheap. Handset makers may or may not pay for the right to use the name and logo of the social service in their marketing. But for the handset maker and mobile operators, the social services are almost free marketing. They get the money by selling hardware and data plans for the consumers.

And the winner is?

Now the tricky point. Do you think you would like to invest money into these cool and popular social services? What happens when your company finds the gold and gets profitable? There will be competition, of course. Everyone wants his or her share of the gold just found. And who has a pole position in that competition? I would say it is the handset maker and operator who puts operating system and preloaded software into your phone.

Why is that? Because those companies already control the market space. The biggest companies in the business, say Google, Vodafone, Nokia, Telefonica, RIM, just to name a few, have truckloads of money. They have thousands of software engineers that will copy the social service framework in a reasonable time to their benefit. Just look at the mobile devices right now. They have IM clients, Skype clients, Facebook clients etc. But the makers have also their own services in parallel. The own clients are probably not as finished, not so good, not so polished as the most popular services. It is because those social services are not profitable enough right now.

As long as your company is not profitable, you are probably "interesting" or "nice". When your last line in the financial statement turns black, you will be a competitor. Be careful, you have been warned. Competition will be fierce.

Ovi Maps helps me to save cash

To put it simple - I use Ovi Maps to save money.

Ever thought your phone can help you to avoid unexpected expense - the speeding ticket? We either just hate or deeply hate those nasty payments easily got on the road. The cameras and guys delivering those are usually placed after the speed limit is lowered. If I just happen to miss the traffic sign showing the new limit, the phone gently reminds me to watch my speed.

Or on the long and boring road, it is easy to push the pedal little deeper. That makes me an easy target for those guys in the radar and camera equipped cars. Now, at least I know when I have been in the "red" and avoid some "extra charges" applied when arguing too loud with the officers about the current speed limit.

The phone with Ovi Maps pays its price back at one shot. Excellent!




Video shows I am first driving in the "green". Then I go to the "red", phone shows the current speed limit and finally remind me about the speeding. OK, I'll slow down...