Visualize four years of mobile phone warfare through Asymco's snake-like bubble charts
iPhone rising. Source: Asymco.com
Horace Dediu, who has been pushing the envelope of data visualization for more than two years, has outdone himself with the interactive chart he posted on his Asymco.com blog Sunday afternoon.
Most conventional graphs display data over just two axes, X and Y. If you want to see how the data in those dimensions change over time, you end up having to draw a series of charts.
That's a particular challenge for Dediu because he's been collecting data on the leading mobile phone vendors over the past four years in many dimensions, including price, profit, volume, revenue and operating margin. How could he possibly squeeze all that into one chart?
Well, now he's done it. His solution: An interactive Flash-based bubble chart that allows you to choose among eight vendors, five Y axes, six X-axes, seven color options and six size options. Pick a company, choose the "tracer" option, hit the play button and you get pictures like the one at right, which shows Apple's (AAPL) iPhone revenues against its operating margins graphed over time where the color (blue) and size of its bubble indicates relatively low volumes and outsized profits.
Nokia shrinking.
The chart at left is Nokia's (NOK) path over roughly the same time period. It starts off selling high volumes (red) and making big profits and moves in a sickly southwestward direction as its margins and revenues shrink, its volumes shift from red to yellow and its profits tighten into a narrow cone.
You can set your parameters in thousands of permutations and draw your own bubble charts for Research in Motion (RIMM), Motorola (MOT), Samsung, Sony Ericsson, HTC and LG -- or show eight competitors snaking over space-time all at once.
I've never seen anything quite like it. Click here to get started.
The sharp rise of one of Apple's frenemies triggers a fierce debate about what it means
Source: Asymco
Some of the most intelligent conversations on the Internet these days are to be found in the comment stream of Horace Dediu's Asymco blog. Not only does Dediu produce striking charts and graphs from his analysis of the mobile phone market, but he carefully moderates the subsequent discussion, pruning repetitive comments and chasing MORE
Philip Elmer-DeWitt - Aug 1, 2011 6:41 AM ET
The iPhone last quarter took in 5.6% of unit sales and 66.3% of the profit
Click to enlarge. Source: Asymco
Some readers complained when we ran a similar headline almost a year ago, accompanied by the bottom chart at right.
At the time, Apple (AAPL) had a 3% share of the global mobile phone market but was taking 39% of the profit -- a situation that didn't seem to bode well for MORE
Philip Elmer-DeWitt - Jul 30, 2011 7:26 AM ET
The next contender: Samsung, whose Android phones are gaining fast
Data: Strategy Analytics. Chart: PED
The companies that track mobile phone sales are just now catching up to the news that came out of Apple's (AAPL) last week. According to the company's Q3 earnings report, Apple sold nearly 20.24 million iPhones last quarter, up 142% from the same quarter last year.
On Thursday, IDC reported that that makes Apple the world's No. MORE
Philip Elmer-DeWitt - Jul 29, 2011 8:06 AM ET
It could, in theory, acquire every cellphone vendor except Samsung with cash alone
Click to enlarge. Source: Asymco
Asymco's Horace Dediu has been tracking Apple's (AAPL) growing liquid assets and the shrinking valuations of its mobile competitors, and he estimates that they soon will cross.
Apple's third fiscal quarter closes next week, and when it does, Dediu is pretty sure that Apple will have amassed more than $70 billion in cash, cash MORE
Philip Elmer-DeWitt - Jun 17, 2011 10:26 AM ET
Visualizing Apple's share of the worldwide mobile phone market in the first quarter of 2011
Unit sales (top) vs. Operating profit (bottom). Source: Asymco.com. Click to enlarge.
On Monday, we reproduced a pair of charts from Asymco's Horace Dediu showing how Apple (AAPL) overtook Nokia (NOK) in less than four years to become the world's No. 1 maker of mobile phones -- smart or otherwise -- in terms of revenue. See MORE
Philip Elmer-DeWitt - May 17, 2011 7:20 AM ET
The deal it announced with Nokia is hardly its first. Here's how the others turned out.
Nokia's Elop and Microsoft's Ballmer. Photo: Nokia
Early Friday morning, Microsoft (MSFT) and Nokia (NOK) announced a strategic partnership to answer the challenge posed by Apple (AAPL) and Google's (GOOG) smartphone platforms.
Tech watchers with long memories -- like Asymco's Horace Dediu -- will recall that this is not the first time Microsoft has found a MORE
Philip Elmer-DeWitt - Feb 11, 2011 10:54 AM ET
The fastest selling phone in LG's history is a mid-range Android slider.
LG hasn't exactly been hitting smartphone home runs lately and is known more for (LG Optronics) supplying the 'Retina Display' of Apple's (AAPL) iPhone 4 than its own products (especially here in the US). It does however, seem to have at least one hit on its hands. The LG Optimus One phone which is a lower-tier candy bar form MORE
Seth Weintraub - Nov 16, 2010 3:49 PM ET
With 90%-plus growth, Apple vaults past RIM and is gaining rapidly on Nokia and LG
Source: IDC
The iPhone has been one of the world's top selling smartphones almost since it hit the market three years ago. But in the larger, 1.2-billion-units-per-year mobile phone market, it never cracked the top five.
Until now.
In IDC's Worldwide Quarterly Mobile Phone Tracker survey, issued late Thursday, Apple (AAPL) overtook Research in Motion (RIMM) to MORE
Philip Elmer-DeWitt - Oct 29, 2010 7:17 AM ET
It's getting hard to tell the litigants without an infographic. Here's the best one we've seen.
Source: InformationIsBeautiful
Note that the companies whose revenue is decreasing, such as Nokia (NOK) and Kodak (EK), tend to launch more lawsuits than those that are growing, such as Apple (AAPL) and LG.
[Follow Philip Elmer-DeWitt on Twitter @philiped]
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