Apple's Huge Quarter in Charts
Apple posted another monster quarter, just as some were starting to doubt it. — Again, Apple's most impressive statistic is its overall sales growth: With more than $39 million in revenue last quarter, Apple's sales grew 59% year-over-year, far faster than its peers.
Context & Ripple Effects
Apple's earnings releases had already formed a steady arc through its first-quarter 2011 results and second-quarter 2011 results. The latest report adds an unusually strong growth figure to that cadence, answering the doubts cited by the article with reported sales growth that outpaced peers.
The result lands while Apple and Samsung are described as the two dominant smartphone competitors, with the industry separating into better- and worse-positioned players. Apple has also scheduled WWDC for June 11–15, giving it a near-term venue to sustain attention around its platform.
First-order effects
- Apple gains evidence that its sales momentum remains intact, strengthening its position heading into its June WWDC event.
- Samsung faces a rival whose reported 59% year-over-year sales growth reinforces the competitive advantage attributed to the two leading smartphone players.
Second-order effects
- The Apple-Samsung contest puts greater pressure on other handset makers to differentiate or match the scale of the two market leaders.
- Apple's growth gives developers and media partners another reason to prioritize its platform ahead of WWDC, where the company can reinforce its software and device ecosystem.
Third-order effects
- If Apple and Samsung continue to pull away, smartphone competition is likely to concentrate further around a small number of companies able to pair hardware scale with software platforms.
- Quarterly growth becomes a strategic signal as well as a financial measure: it shapes which platforms suppliers, developers, and partners treat as the safest bets.
The trend: The smartphone market is trending toward a two-leader structure in which sales scale and platform momentum reinforce one another.