More on the Phone Market

There is some more data, this time from Kantar Worldpanel, which supports the notion that the cellular market is maturing.   Presented to the left is an estimate of market share for various operating systems in various countries.

Dominic Sunnebo, strategic insight director at Kantar Worldpanel ComTech, comments: “After years of increasing market share, Android has now reached a point where significant growth in developed markets is becoming harder to find. Android’s growth has been spearheaded by Samsung, but the manufacturer is now seeing its share of sales across the major European economies dip year on year as a sustained comeback from Sony, Nokia and LG begins to broaden the competitive landscape.”

But there is a second story which is more complex and ultimately more interesting.   With the 5S Apple began a refresh of their mobile devices to a 64 bit architecture.   It is likely that over the next couple of months the next versions of iPads will be moved to the 64 bit structure.   New iPads will come out in one or more cycles before the end of the year.  While some experts have yammered that the move to the new chip is not a big deal, I think it might be.  The key asset of a 64 bit chip is that it grabs data more effectively.    If Apple is moving to cover all of these devices in a short refresh cycle the integrated ecosystem of Apple will begin to pay off in big steps.  All of a sudden the look and feel of all that stuff that you use for your mobile devices will be faster - with things like fingerprint id but also with the less snazzy stuff like doing things like multitasking.  If the device is quicker and more useful (both of which the 64 bit structure can assist - then the stickiness of the device in a mature market will increase.