Apple's iPhone4 Breaks Record! Can it Dominate the Smart Phone Market?

The recent launch of iPhone4 stormed the smart phone market. So much was the effect that Apple Inc. said it took advance orders for more than 600,000 new iPhones world-wide on the first day the device became available, a flood of demand that caused difficulty processing orders at U.S. carrier AT&T Inc.

Apple said the preorders were the most ever taken by the company in a single day, and 10 times higher than for the iPhone 3GS last year.

AT&T had earlier suspended pre-orders of Apple's iPhone 4 after the phone giant was unable to handle record demand for the product, and recent update is that it sold more than 1.7 million iPhone 4s within the first three days of the phone's launch

Analysts have been expecting the new model to help Apple sell about 36 million iPhones in the year ending in September, up about 73% from 20.8 million a year earlier.

Do you think APPLE still has to go a long way to dominate the smart phone market or to become the market leader? Take a look at this statistics.

Since launching three years ago, the iPhone has become Apple's largest business, accounting for more than 40% of its revenue. According to research firm IDC, Apple is currently the third-largest smart phone maker in the world with a market share of 16.1% share behind the market leader Nokia and Research in Motion (BlackBerry).

Apple has increased their iPhone shipments to a whopping 131.6% from Q1 2009 to the most recent Q1 2010 period (from 3.8 million to 8.8 million). Compare that with an average 56.7% industry growth in YoY shipments for Smart Phones and you start to get an idea about the growing influence of iPhone in the smart phone market.

The response that the recent iPhone4 has received in the market and the speed at which it grows and with impressive sales figures, iPhone's growth rate of 131.6% in terms of YoY shipments of smart phones is much higher compared to the industry average of 56.7%, all these factors indicating that APPLE is on its way to dominate the smart phone market. Though Nokia is in a comfortable position today with a market share of 39.3%, it faces a potential threat from iPhone, and it poses an immediate threat to RIM (Black Berry) which has a market share 19.4%, keeping in mind the astonishing growth rate of APPLE's iPhone, it is likely to zoom ahead of blackberry in terms of market share very soon.

Well, it will be interesting to watch what strategy RIM and Nokia would adopt to defend their market positions, when their rival APPLE's iPhones storm the market and continue to sell like hot cakes.