Apple earns 540% more than Samsung in 2017 by selling fewer smartphones

In recent years the battle to dominate the smartphone market has been with swords raised to the top, with new brands trying to gain a foothold, the classic ones fighting with new designs and with China breaking into their country strong and even taking over every time. more of the cake out of it. The estimates on the units sold offer us very changing figures depending on who says them, but in general Apple is far from monopolizing a majority share of the market except for very specific countries such as Japan or the United States.

However, when it comes to benefits there is no discussion that fits: Apple is the absolute queen. Last year 2016 was no exception, and Apple kept most of the profits made by the entire global smartphone market, with Samsung far behind and a few Chinese marches to settle for the crumbs.

Many times the success or good year of a company is questioned by the units sold of a certain product, forgetting that it can never be the same to sell a product of almost € 1000 to sell another of € 100 or even give it away. In all three cases, the product counts the same in the statistics: one unit sold. But the benefits for the company, which in the end is what this business is all about, are very different. That is why the data on profits obtained in the global smartphone market during the past year are so enlightening, where a total of 53.700 billion dollars in profits are estimated, and Apple was left with 44.900 billion, 83% of the total.

How many profits did Samsung make? Well, only 8.300 million dollars, less than a fifth of what Apple obtained. But if we go down to third place we find Huawei, one of the fastest growing brands this year, but which must settle with only 929 million dollars. To get an idea of ​​what the "unstoppable irruption" of Chinese brands in the smartphone market means, the three most important brands in sales together manage to obtain less than 5% of profits.

Worse is the case of Xiaomi, one of the most media brands that has come to be considered the «Chinese Apple» and that in the words of Hugo Barra, his former vice president, "could sell 10.000 billion smartphones that would not make a single cent of profit". With these figures it is difficult to believe that Apple could be worried that the Chinese market has fallen to fourth place in sales, or that Huawei has broken into Europe strongly. Other brands can already sell smartphones for € 100 or even give them away when you buy a TV, the one that takes the cat into the water while others boast of sales is always the same.