Global smartphone profits in the first quarter took a shine to Apple and Samsung and literally left nothing for anyone else.
As the Wall Street Journal’s All Things D points out, new research from Canaccord Genuity suggests that Apple captured 57 percent of worldwide smartphone industry profits while Samsung scooped up the remaining 43 percent.
The same report shows the likes of HTC, BlackBerry and Nokia all firmly left in the lurch.
Apple and Samsung showed similar dominance in the previous quarter. However, Apple controlled 72 percent of global smartphone profits and Samsung 29 percent in the fourth quarter of 2012.
Running the global smartphone racket is a good job to have nowadays. IDC recently indicated that more smartphones than feature phones are being made this year. IDC’s numbers show that 419 million handsets shipped globally in the first quarter of 2013 and that 51.6 percent of those were smartphones.
IDC estimates that Samsung is the top mobile phone maker overall in the world, ahead of Nokia and leaving Apple in third. Apple’s smartphone profit dominance could be attributed to its healthy 35 percent mobile device operating margin the Canaccord Genuity study attributed to Cupertino.