Apple Claims Almost Half of Mobile Industry Profits

Apple may have only made up three percent of the global mobile sales but it managed to pull 48 percent of the entire industry’s profit before interest and taxes are calculated.

Industry analyst Asymco has been monitoring Apple’s progress in the mobile space since 2007 and discovered  that Apple’s entry has changed the industry both technologically and financially. The market may have been growing but Apple’s growth has eaten into much of the existing players’ portion of the pie.

In the second quarter of 2007 Nokia had the lion’s share of the profits with 63 percent while Samsung and SonyEricsson trailed at 12 and 11 percent respectively. The same period this year saw Apple taking 48 percent of the profits followed by Nokia at 22 percent and RIM at 17 percent. Samsung dropped slightly to 10 percent while SonyEricsson plunged to just one percent.

Nokia has been flooding the market with low end and slim margin phones whereas Apple’s iPhones cost on average $600 without carrier subsidies.

Notably, Asymco’s research does not count HTC despite its significant entry in recent years especially since it picked up Google’s Android platform.

Asymco noted that the figures used to determine their data they used to form the basis of their research are not available for HTC