Report: Apple Accounted For 93 Percent Smartphone Industry Profits In Q4; One-third Of All Smartphone Users To Own an iPhone By 2018

By Kamal Nayan - 10 Feb '15 00:33AM

For Apple, this quarter could not be better, thanks to the extremely strong iPhone sales. With the most profitable quarter in the history, Apple has also become the only company in the world making money off smartphones.

According to a new report from Cannacord, Apple accounted for 93 percent of smartphone profits in Q4 2014. The finding is certainly bad news for companies like Samsung, LG, HTC and anyone else. To make it even worse, the report says one-third of all smartphone users will own an iPhone by the end of 2018.

The prediction means that Apple would end up with 650 million iPhone users worldwide in the next 3-4 years.

Now that Apple has added a bigger screen, the company has begun eating away at high-tier Android smartphones' marketshare. Another point worth mentioning is that of the 404 million iPhone users worldwide, only 15 percent have the latest model of iPhone.

The report noted that Samsung was the only other company to make money off smartphones sales and all other companies are operating at no profit or at a negative margin.

Cannacord predicts Apple will increase its install base 20% year-over-year in 2015 to finish with a total of 487 million subscribers. By 2018 that number is expected to his 650 million, or roughly one-third of the projected 1.8 billion global premium smartphone subscribers, CultofMac reported.