The battle over supremacy of sales and consumer mindshare in the smartphone market continues between Apple and Samsung. According to Canaccord Genuity’s Mike Walkley, Samsung has topped Apple in Q1 for the number one spot, thanks to a slew of handsets teaming up on the iPhone 4S.
Walkley states that several models from Samsung have helped the company in March:
Top-selling models included the iPhone 4S at AT&T/Verizon/Sprint, the Samsung Galaxy S II at AT&T/Sprint/T-Mobile, the Motorola Droid RAZR (MAXX) and Samsung Droid Nexus at Verizon, the Samsung Galaxy Note at AT&T, and the HTC Amaze and Samsung Galaxy S Blaze at T-Mobile.
What the analyst also mentioned that was interesting is the Verizon iPhone 4S resolve against what he called an “onslaught of competition from phones running Google’s Android operating system, and using long term evolution.”
In addition, Walkley said the Verizon iPhone held its own (sales wise), but numbers weren’t as strong as its competitor’s AT&T and Sprint, and how store managers at Verizon “are clearly incentivized to sell LTE smartphones.” Here’s more of what Walkley had to say:
We believe cumulative Android smartphones may have represented over 50% of total smartphone sales at Verizon for the first time since the iPhone 4S launch. In fact, our checks indicated sales of the iPhone 4S at Verizon were not as strong in terms of total smartphone share at AT&T and Sprint. We believe this was due in part to the LTE promotions at Verizon and the fact many Verizon customers recently bought the iPhone 4 that launched only one year ago and are locked into a two-year contract and thus not eligible for a subsidized iPhone 4S. Further, Verizon store managers are clearly incentivized to sell LTE smartphones. However, despite the LTE promotions at Verizon, the iPhone 4S remained by far the top-selling smartphone at Verizon on an individual SKU basis.
Smartphones are taking over, but this shouldn’t come to anyones surprise, as half of mobile subscribers have smartphones in the United States already. Walkley predicts that Samsung sell upwards of 41 million smartphone units this quarter, which is better than Apple’s 32.6 million and Nokia’s 12.5 million, giving Samsung the top slot in smartphone sales of 1454. million in total.