The iPhone 5 improves on several points from the previous version, which leads some people to believe that it will fight off some of the fierce competition (at least for a little while). Apple is fighting with Samsung, Microsoft, Amazon and Nokia, and each gave the new iPhone 5 a polite grilling–comparing their own efforts with the Apple brand iPhone 5.
4G LTE
Web addicts are served well since the new phone is compatible with the latest LTE mobile networks (better known as 4G LTE). This is a widely anticipated move up-market, and allows Apple to catch up with its competitors.
The biggest problem Apple will face in the near future it that large chunks of Europe are not going to take up 4G for a few years (Britain-2012, France-2013, and Denmark-2014). This means that market-share wise they are not going to blaze away in Europe, but with that in mind, neither are the other handsets with 4G. This problem can even become the topic for some custom essay.
New processor for iPhone 5
The iPhone 5 is also equipped with a new processor that allows it to be, according to Apple, twice more powerful than its predecessor the iPhone 4S. Nevertheless, the most important thing for Apple is to sell more phones, which leads us to ask if they really allowed people enough time to fall in love with the iPhone 4.
Sure a new phone has been absent for a while, but if the iPhone 4 was so great then why bring out an iPhone 5 so fast. Are people going to put off buying the iPhone 5, because they are going to wait for the iPhone 6 to arrive within 12 months?
The financial success of Apple
The Smartphone is king by itself, with more than 50% of the turnover in American coming from the smartphone. In the last quarter (worldwide), Apple earned about $16 billion through the iPhone. Google made $12 billion, Amazon made $13 billion and Intel made $14 billion. If we consider the success of Apple at the moment and we remember that they also have the very popular iPod nano, etc., it seems that the iPhone 5 is going to have to bomb quite seriously in order to worry the heads of the Apple Company.
Google’s Android
Whether the iPhone 5 bombs or not may not be the issue. The market share in America is seriously threatened by Google’s Android OS being so prevalent on many makes of tablet and phone device. Since early 2012, Google’s Android has been capturing 60% market share. The lack of a new model for Apple was made worse by the aggressiveness of the commercial competitors like Samsung or HTC, who have released several Smartphone’s each year.
iPhone 5 vs. Samsung and HTC
Will the new iPhone 5 quash the aggressive efforts of Samsung or HTC? We cannot be sure, but you have to assume that Samsung and HTC think so, otherwise why would they have pushed their product so hard when a new Apple iPhone was absent?
Android devices vs. iPhone 5
So does this mean that the real fight will be between the Android devices and the iPhone? Well… maybe not. We have to remember that when we talk about the iPhone, we are talking about one make of phone, and one operating system, but when we talk about the Android we are talking about one operating system but multiple phones and tablets.
If your neighbour decides to make a new type of phone tomorrow, he may put an Android OS into it. He may not however put an Apple iOS into it. Therefore, the fight may not be with Google Android on its own, but more with all the other phone manufacturers who use the Android OS. In other words the fight is not between operating systems, it is between hardware.
When you add all of the Android using companies up–it comes to 60%. But that 60% is made up by multiple other companies. Hypothetically, if we look at all of these phone companies making phone with Android installed, we may see one that holds a 20% market share–that makes poor resolution screens, one that hold a 20% share that–has a bad internet connection, and one that holds 20% that–only has a 3 mega pixel camera.
This means that even though these three hypothetical companies holds 60% of the market share, none of them will individually knock the Apple iPhone from being one of the top mobile phones.
This leads us to conclude (again) that Apples iPhone 5 is going to have to bomb pretty severely in order for it to lose any of its 40% market share.