Apple posted 92 percent of the total operating income of the top eight smartphone manufacturers in the world for the first quarter, an increase compared to the 65 percent posted in the same quarter last year.
Samsung, meanwhile, posted only 15 percent, according to the estimates posted by Canaccord Genuity.
Mike Walkley, the managing director of Canaccord Genuity, said that the two companies total for over 100 percent of the profits of the industry because there were some smartphone manufacturers that only broke even or found themselves losing money.
Events that happened over the past week also highlighted the dominance of Apple in the smartphone market. While Apple was asking its suppliers to produce a record amount of new models of the iPhone, Samsung was forecasting lower-than-expected profits, HTC posted a loss for the quarter, and Microsoft suffered an impairment of 80 percent on the worth of the smartphone business that it purchased from Nokia.
The profit share of Apple is made more remarkable by that fact that it sells less than 20 percent of the total smartphones in terms of number of units sold. This reflects the company's ability to release higher prices for its devices, as compared to its rivals that mostly utilize the Android operating system of Android. Due to having the same operating system, the companies find it difficult to distinguish their offerings from those of other companies, and so resort to offering price cuts to remain competitive.
Strategy Analytics executive director Neil Mawston thinks that many of the Android smartphone manufacturers are stuck in the middle between high-volume, low-cost smartphone companies such as Xiaomi and the premium smartphones of Apple.
Even Samsung, which once actually dominated the industry, is now struggling. The company said that it is once again expecting decreased profits for the seventh consecutive quarter, as Samsung misjudged demand for its newest flagship smartphones. Samsung said that it ordered too many units of the Galaxy S6 and not enough of the Galaxy S6 Edge.
Current trends show how quickly fortunes can change in the smartphone industry. Back when Apple launched the first iPhone in 2007, Nokia claimed about two-thirds of the profits of the industry. By 2012, Apple and Samsung equally split the profits mostly between themselves. Now, Apple is dominating.
One of the major factors of Apple's current standing in the industry is the higher prices of the company's offerings. The iPhone sold at a global average price of $624 last year, compared to $185 for Android smartphones.
