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Telecom & Wireless

Samsung Is US Handset Leader, But Does It Make Money?

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By Douglas A. McIntyre Updated Published

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Samsung had more market share of the US handset market than any other manufacturer in the three months which ended in November. The figure was 25.6% according to Comscore, up .3% from the previous three months. Samsung may be the market leader, but the profits from that lead may be small, and perhaps nonexistent.

Apple’s (NASDAQ: AAPL) market share was a much smaller 11.2%. That was up 1.4 points from the previous three months, probably because of the new iPhone 4S.

The primary differences between Apple and Samsung include the fact that Samsung makes cheap handsets that are not smartphones. Samsung makes smartphones as well, but it does not have a product line like Apple’s iPhone. Every Apple handset is a smartphone. Smartphones sell for much more than low end cell phones do.

The second difference is that Apple makes a much larger profit than Samsung does because Verizon’s and AT&T’s appetites for Apple iPhones is so hight. Canaccord Genuity claims Apple had more than half the handset industry operating profit last year. That leavse the balance to giants Samsung, LG, and Nokia. That is not much black ink to spread around.

Samsung’s lead in the US handset market may cause some to believe that Apple has lost its touch. When smartphone market share and industry profits are measures, first place does not look so attractive.

Douglas A. McIntyre

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About the Author Douglas A. McIntyre →

Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.

McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.

His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.

A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.

TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.

McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.

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