I'm not one of those "the bigger the better" type of people.  "Less is more" is a more accurate description of how I see the world. However, recently  the "facts over hype" side of me is gaining strength. You know what I'm talking about. Mr. Jobs claiming that Apple is the "largest mobile device company in the world".

I spent a few hours pulling together this chart below. I left out Samsung and other important device manufacturs out of the picture, because it is widely recognized that Nokia is a bigger mobile company than they are. The interesting area lies with Apple and the two mobile OS providers, Google and Microsoft. (although I suppose we can now claim that Google is a device vendor, too).



*) Figures from Apple are from 12 months ended December 26, 2009
**) Figures from Microsoft are from 12 months ended December 31, 2009
***) From Gartner's Q3 mobile OS market share report
Other notes: Nokia numbers non-IFRS, others GAAP. Currency in USD, exchange rate Dec 31, 2009, 1 EUR=1.4406 USD. Apple's device market shares are calculated by comparing their device sales (8.7M) to Nokia's estimate of the overall industry market for converged devices in Q4 (52.4M) and to all mobile devices (329M). Calculations CAN include mistakes. If you're unsure, check the numbers. They are all from public sources.


What do these numbers tell us?

First, that Nokia is not some small player from some foreign country, but in revenue bigger than all of these other companies (ok, with Msft this could be a close call). In net income, Nokia is suffering from its network business so it's less relevant in this comparison.

Second, Nokia has a 40% market share in smartphones, converged devices, or whatever you want to call them. They are the devices that analysts call phones that are like the iPhone, you know, for web browsing, email, video and other fun stuff. Apple's market share in this category is 17%. Our American friends may find this difficult to believe, because these Nokia devices are not visible in your market. But they are in other markets, and we are now talking about global figures.

Even if we would count the 21 million iPod's that Apple sold during Q4 in as "mobile devices" (which is not what any analyst has ever done before), Apple's "mobile device" market share would be (21+8.7)/329x100=9%. I mean, surely you wouldn't say that the iPod should be counted in the converged devices category and use 52.4M as a nominator instead of 329M, would you? The iPod doesn't even make phone calls, whereas Nokia's S40 phones do have a web browser, they play music and do all kinds of nifty things. Throw in the 2,1 million Macbooks, and Apple's market share goes to 9.67%

How is this the "largest mobile device company in the world"?  Toyota sold nearly 10 million "mobile devices" in 2008. Why don't we include them in the comparison? What about frisbees, remote-controlled toys and vacuum cleaners? All devices, all mobile....  I mean really, get real Mr. Jobs.

PS. Feel free to correct errors you find the chart. Also, feel free to disagree the use of non-IFRS numbers as better comparison to GAAP than the IFRS numbers. I value facts.

Sources:
http://www.nokia.com/about-nokia/financials/quarterly-and-annual-information/q4-2009
http://www.apple.com/pr/library/
http://investor.google.com/releases/2009Q4_google_earnings.html
http://www.microsoft.com/msft/default.mspx
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Financial_Reporting_Standards