A couple of roundup reports were put out this morning on the smartphone market, trying to sort out who’s in the pole position, principally here in the U.S., but also with some observations from Europe.
Pacific Crest’s James Faucette writes that his “checks” with U.S. carriers’ sales reps indicate May’s handset sales were up in the month versus April, as is seasonally to be expected, though April set a “low bar” with weak sales. Demand in Europe is proving “worse than expected,” he writes.
Sales of Nokia‘s (NOK) “Lumia” line of phones, developed with Microsoft (MSFT) were “reasonably good” in May, he writes:
Our checks indicate that sales of Nokia�s flagship Windows phones, the Lumia series, continued at run rates in the United States roughly equal to those we detected a month ago. We continue to believe that Lumia 900 sales at AT&T in particular are benefiting from an ex- tremely broad advertising campaign, which may also be helping out sales of the Lumia 600 at T-Mobile by giving the Lumia platform greater overall exposure. Our checks indicate that sales of Lumia products in Europe likely increased from April.
Faucette rates Nokia shares Sector Perform.
HTC (2498TW) had trouble with some units in Europe, requiring the company to take back a “large portion” of its “One X” model in order to “re-flash” them for software errors.
Samsung Electronics‘s (005930KS) “Galaxy S III” device is doing well, though a bunch of glitches with the roll-out mean that “few retail locations in Europe have actually received devices in stores.” Note that Samsung this morning announced availability in the U.S. later this month with several carriers.
The Street may not fully appreciate the risk to chip maker Qualcomm (QCOM), writes Faucette, which is rated Outperform:
We believe our forecast for the June and September quarters reflects the potential for a slowdown both from Europe and a potentially larger pause leading up to the launch of iPhone 5, which we believe will likely occur around October.
Research in Motion (RIMM) continues to see sales in the U.S. slip, and inventory is mounting, he believes:
Our checks indicate that U.S. BlackBerry sales declined further in May while inventory remained relatively stable. We believe days of inventory have risen to six to eight weeks, which is roughly 3x to 4x the carriers� normal targets.
R.W. Baird’s William Power also adds his observations based on talking with 30 RadioShack reps last week, noting strength for Apple‘s (AAPL) iPhone 4S, and for the One X and Lumia:
Across all carriers, the iPhone 4S continued to be the most recommended device, and several reps reported that it continues to be their best selling device. Outside of the iPhone, reps most frequently recommended HTC One X for AT&T users, with some also recommending the Nokia Lumia 900.
Interestingly, Power makes a point of calling out a data point from startup Distimo, which makes software to monitor which smartphone apps are carried by the different application stores — Apple’s App Store, Google‘s (GOOG) Play Store, etc. He infers the prominence of Apple’s, Google’s and Microsoft’s stores:
33% of the iPhone�s top 300 apps are also available on Google Play (fka Android Market). Notably, Apple�s App Store, Google Play, and Amazon�s App Store have the most overlap, which we view as an indicator that the most successful applications are targeting those three stores.
See Distimo’s blog post from last week about the data here, with a rather fascinating graphic of overlapping app availability.
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