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Winnipeg Free Press - PRINT EDITION

Apple, Samsung push rivals aside

Nokia, BlackBerry lose dominance in the consumer electronics world

By: Andrea Chang

Posted: 12/28/2012 1:00 AM | Comments: 0

JULIE JACOBSON / THE ASSOCIATED PRESS ARCHIVES The Nokia Lumia 800 Windows-based phone is seen at the 2012 International CES trade show in Las Vegas last January. (CP)

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DAVE CHIDLEY / THE CANADIAN PRESS ARCHIVES An employee holds a BlackBerry Playbook tablet at the Research in Motion annual meeting in Waterloo, Ont., in July 2011. (CP)

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KOJI SASAHARA / THE ASSOCIATED PRESS ARCHIVES A shopper looks at Matsushita Electric Industrial Co.�s world largest plasma TV, a 103-inch Viera (left) and other TVs at a Tokyo store in 2007. Matsushita makes Panasonic products. (CP)

Consumer electronics are among the most popular holiday gifts, but how many people really wanted a BlackBerry tablet, a Panasonic television or a Nokia smartphone for Christmas?

It's been a tough year for old-guard tech companies, including Sony, Sharp, Panasonic, Nokia and Research in Motion, which not too long ago enjoyed widespread popularity. Now, for a variety of reasons -- price, slow pace of innovation, lack of coolness factor and a cutthroat market -- the former stalwarts are frequently becoming second-tier options among fickle consumers.

"There is a consolidation around just a handful of players," said Bob Bellack, chief executive of Newegg North America, an online electronics retailer. "There's going to be a handful of companies that have huge resources that are able to build a castle and a moat around it, and I think that's what you're seeing. It's actually very unfortunate for consumers in the long run."

As shoppers gravitate toward a smaller pool of brands for their big-ticket electronics purchases, the effects are being seen in sales of cellphones, tablets and televisions, with industry leaders Samsung and Apple leading in nearly all categories.

In the U.S. smartphone market, "the lion's share" of growth is concentrated in the top two brands, market research firm NPD Group said. The group found Apple's iPhone took 31 per cent of the market in the second quarter, followed by Samsung with 24 per cent.

And that advantage is growing. Apple's and Samsung's combined smartphone unit sales that quarter rose 43 per cent year over year as sales for other brands fell 16 per cent. BlackBerry and Nokia didn't even make the top five brands in the U.S.

(In Canada, an Ipsos-Reid survey in September found phones running Android account for 36 per cent of the market, compared with 29 per cent for Apple and 27 per cent for RIM's BlackBerry. In January 2011, the BlackBerry was tops with 41 per cent market share. Android was second with 26 per cent and Apple was third at 23 per cent.)

Samsung is also gaining ground in the global cellphone market. The South Korean juggernaut is set to become the No. 1 mobile handset brand in the world this year, uprooting struggling Nokia, which has held the top spot for the last 14 years, market research firm IHS said.

For companies playing catch-up, the challenge is to create devices that are technologically superior, cheaper or otherwise unique in some way, and to work more closely with wireless carriers to promote them.

"It's a competitive market; it's always been a competitive market," said Grace Belmonte, a marketing director at Nokia, which has been touting its new phones running on Microsoft's Windows Phone operating system. "It's tough for the consumer because there's so many messages out there, and I think what becomes critical is that your message comes through... It makes all the manufacturers step up to the table."

Underscoring Apple's and Samsung's elite status, the top five smartphone models sold in the third quarter were the iPhone 4, iPhone 4S, iPhone 5, Samsung's Galaxy S III and the Galaxy S II, NPD said.

Among tablets brands, Apple was even more dominant, with the Cupertino, Calif., company capturing a 55 per cent share of the market based on worldwide shipments in the third quarter, according to technology market research firm ABI Research, followed by Samsung, Amazon and Asus.

Many consumers said they opted to buy products from the same brand for a seamless experience between gadgets. That means companies with a complete family of apps and devices across multiple categories and price points come out on top -- and that success often builds upon itself, making it difficult for other brands to break in.

The upside for mobile-device makers, especially those using the rapidly growing Android operating system, is that there are still ample growth opportunities in the relatively young smartphone and tablet sectors.

It's a more dire picture in the television market, which has been in a slump as budget-conscious consumers delay buying new TVs and use their tablets and other mobile devices to stream content.

In the third quarter, industry leaders Samsung and LG increased global flat-panel TV revenues year over year by three per cent and one per cent, respectively, remaining the top two brands overall. But the top three Japanese brands -- Sony, Sharp and Panasonic -- saw revenues decline at a double-digit pace from last year, according to data from NPD DisplaySearch.

"It is a little sad to see someone like Sony, who used to be a dominant leader in the TV business, to see them watch their market share fall," said Paul Gagnon, director of global TV research at NPD DisplaySearch. "It's a bit of a reality check."

Part of the problem, Gagnon said, is that Japanese TV makers operate with lower profit margins than their South Korean and Chinese competitors, making it "very tough" to compete on price.

"Unfortunately price has become the metric by which consumers judge TVs," Gagnon said. "When I look at a 32-inch LCD TV, generally speaking, I can find a Samsung or LG or one of the other brands for 10 per cent or 20 per cent less than, say, a Sony or a Panasonic of a similar size."

That's especially bad news for Japanese TV makers heading into 2013, which is expected to be another sluggish year for the television industry.

-- Los Angeles Times

Republished from the Winnipeg Free Press print edition December 28, 2012 B15

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