Apple’s 33.8 M iPhones Earned More Than Samsung, LG, Nokia’s Mobile Shipments Combined

An interesting article from AppleInsider reveals that Apple’s sale of “just” 33.8 million iPhones during the last quarter earned the company more than Samsung’s entire mobile unit, that includes PCs, netbooks and tablets, plus the mobile phone hardware divisions of LG, Nokia, Huawei, Lenovo and Motorola. Despite Samsung’s sale of 120 million smartphone units, which is 3.5x more than Apple during the same quarter, Apple earned significantly more money.

Phone profits 102913

 

The source points out that Apple’s Apple’s 33.8 million iPhone sales earned more money for the company than Samsung’s 120.1 million, Nokia’s 64.6 million, LG’s 14.4 million and Huawei’s 12.1 million phone sales combined. While Samsung is selling more than 3.5 times as many units as second place Apple, the profit numbers apparently don’t change that much.

Apple actually earned enough more to have beaten not only Samsung Mobile (which reported operating profits of 6.7 Trillion KRW, or about $6.3 Billion U.S.), but also the phone businesses of Nokia Devices and Services (-$118M), LG (-$75M) and Google’s Motorola (-$192M). 

That’s actually easy to report because none of those companies earned much of anything on their smartphone sales for the quarter. The other profitable phone makers, Huawei ($3.4M) and Lenovo (which apparently hasn’t announced earnings yet, but last quarter it reported just short of $1 billion) making it also quite easy to throw in the “makes less than Apple combined” pot, with room for about $2.7 billion left over. 

What’s more interesting to note is that even if we ignore profits and look only at smartphones, Samsung’s shipment volume numbers are not really comparable to Apple’s iPhone sales in the quarter, majority of which were iPhone 5. As shipments of Samsung’s flagship Galaxy S4 model softened, solid demand for the new Note 3 and for mass-market devices like the Galaxy Y eventually helped to lift Samsung’s volumes.

The article also highlights that Apple’s year over year iPhone sales growth of 26% was “faster than that of the overall industry,” which the analysts pegged at just 7%.

P.S. - Like our news? Support the site with a coffee/beer. Or shop with our Amazon link. We use affiliate links when possible--thank you for supporting independent media.