Apple Continues to Increase Its Share Of Mobile Phone Industry Profits

Despite Apple has seen sequential decrease in iPhone sales in the third quarter of 2011 as customers waited for the iPhone 4S launch, the company again raked in more than half of the profits produced by the largest mobile phone manufacturers over the quarter, according to a research report (via Forbes) by analyst T. Michael Walkley.

The study’s estimates shows that Apple made 52 percent of the aggregate profits over the quarter, down from 57 percent in the previous quarter, but up from 47 percent in the last year’s quarter when the company also put the then-new iPhone 4 on sale.

“In an epic reversal of fortunes, Mr. Walkley pointed out that in 2007, Nokia had 67% of operating profits while Apple had just 4%. Today, while Apple has 52% of industry profits, Nokia has been relegated its rival’s former position with just 4% of operating profits”.

AllThingsD reports that Walkey predicts that the releases of the iPhone 4S will boost further profits growth, pushing Apple to seize over 60% of overall industry profits in the holiday quarter of 2011.

Apart from Walkey, Asymco's Horace Dediu also routinely release his estimates of profits shares on mobile phone market. Although Dediu’s estimates are typically 5-10 percent higher for Apple, the trends observed by each analyst are consistent. Apart from some fluctuations due to cycles of iPhone releases, Apple is continuously increasing its largest share of industry profits despite it ships only a small part of total units.