Apple has dominated the smartphone markets of the Western world now for quite some time with its iPhone and recent figures show Apple’s dominance is growing in places like the USA. However, a new report suggests that Samsung is the company dominating the emerging markets of the world. In fact what was more surprising was the fact that Samsung is actually more popular than Nokia and Apple. Putting price aside consumers, from developing markets in Brazil, India, Saudi Arabia and Nigeria, were asked which brand of phone they would buy and the results were: 32% Samsung, 22% Nokia, 21% Apple and 10% Blackberry. Only in Nigeria was Samsung not the dominant brand, Nokia reigned supreme there.
Looking at developed markets such as the United Kingdom and the USA, 32% of shoppers said they would buy an Apple device compared to just 22% choosing Samsung. According to Upstream, who conducted all these studies, this is because there is a strong relationship between income and brand loyalty.
“There’s a correlation between income and brand affinity,” says Marco Veremis, Upstream’s founder and CEO. “In the developing world, the mobile phone is an item of absolute day to day necessity, so brand choice is less important.”
Another thing pointed out by Upstream is that emerging markets tend to be skipping over the PC Desktop and Laptop phase, nearly all using the mobile phone as their primary electronics device for just about everything. Nokia has been cited as doing well in the poorest nations as its long battery life helps counteract erratic power supply networks.
While Samsung and Apple may dominate overall, it seems Apple’s position is under global threat unless they can tap into these emerging markets. Samsung has been seeing rapidly increasing global demand thanks to the success of the Galaxy S III and the demand for the Galaxy S IV. Nokia and Blackberry may seem irrelevant and/or on-the-decline in the Western world but in emerging markets they are still very much front-running candidates.
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