Apple dominates profits with 57% profit share in Mobiles Globally

I had first blogged about the wealth, margins and profit distribution between smartphone makers 9 months back. Read Global Smartphone markets: Of disruptive competition and wealth distribution.

Asymco has come out with another sequential set of figures that focus on share of margins and profits for 8 of the largest smartphone vendors in the world.

1. The ever familiar change of guard in smartphones is a cliche.With Nokia Loosing out on a YoY and Sequential growth and high rises from the Apple and the Androids.

2. The surprise kid here is RIM, which is positive on 3 yr CAGR, Y-O-Y and Sequential. This is more to do with Blackberry’s growing markets in Asia mostly. On its home turf, BB has been taking the pounding from both Apple and Android.

3. With 19% smartphone (Canalys) Market share, and 5% Mobiles (IDC) market share, Apple takes a disproportionate 45% of the industry profits. Blackberry (25% of Industry Margins), HTC (15%), Samsung (12%) and Nokia (8%) complete the list.

The mobile industry has historically been unforgiving. Companies that fall into unprofitability tend to stay there or exit/merge. This has claimed many: Ericsson, Siemens, Alcatel, BenQ, Palm, Sony, Toshiba, Handspring, NEC, Hitachi, Casio. LG, Moto and Sony Ericsson are all in the same precarious situation. We’ll have to watch carefully whether a recovery is possible for any of them and whether Nokia will reach the same rocky position.

Looking at operating profit shares; While RIM, Samsung and HTC have maintained profit share, between 2007 and now, profit share has mostly shifted from Nokia to Apple. Nokia has declined from 47% in 2007 and Apple has come from 0% to 57% of Industry profits.

Not that it surprise too many: It’s become routine to see Apple at the top of the list of profit earners from mobile phones.