It wasn't too long ago when people liked that Apple only released one iPhone a year. The landscape has changed extremely fast, though, as more and more analysts begin to consider the strategy a handicap. This is the case even in spite of findings, Thursday, that Apple's share of the mobile phone market actually increased over the previous year.
Market researcher Strategy Analytics told Reuters, Friday, that they expect Samsung to grow 35 percent this year, extending its lead over the Cupertino-based hardware maker.
The reason? Samsung's larger, more varied portfolio of handsets.
"We expect Samsung to slightly extend its lead over Apple this year because of its larger multitier product portfolio," said Neil Mawston, executive director at Strategy Analytics.
Strategy Analytics projects that Samsung will sell over 290 million phones this year, blazing past last year's 215 million sales. Apple sales, meanwhile, are still projected to rise 33 percent over the previous year, giving the company a 21 percent share of the entire market. That is well below the 33 percent market share that Samsung is expected to rake in.
"Samsung plays in more segments and this should enable it to capture more volume than Apple (assuming Apple does not launch an 'iPhone Mini' this year)," Mawston said.
And there's the catch. Mawston believes that Apple could make great gains and cut into Samsung's share with the introduction of a smaller phone. He just doesn't think it's going to come out this year due to the strong growth in iPhone 5 sales. Instead, he expects Apple to continue its current course until it is forced to change its approach.
"We think Apple will have to launch an 'iPhone Mini' at some point over the next three years to address the hundreds of millions of prepaid users worldwide that cannot afford the current iPhone," he said. "We expect the iPhone Mini to be more likely next year, in 2014 when ... Apple will be forced to discover fresh growth streams."
The iPhone Mini may still be a ways off, but that doesn't necessarily mean Apple is being complacent. It is widely expected that the company will reveal an interim upgrade to the iPhone 5 this year, and reports on Jan. 4 indicate that a new kind of screen may be utilized.
