Corporations are people, right? Some politician somewhere said that once. And if corporations are people, they can be graded like students. We thought we'd play the teacher for our year-end retrospective on the mobile industry, handing out a report card to each of the major smartphone manufacturers.
We considered each company's flagship phones for the year, how well they sold, and how the company marketed them to the public. Only a few manufacturers received grades worth telling Ma about, while others will have to do some extra-credit work to get ahead next year.
Of course, some of these companies make a lot of different products (hello, Samsung). These grades reflect only their smartphone efforts.
Apple
Image: Mike Homnick
It should come as no surprise that Apple's had yet another successful year, though industry watchers had some doubts early on. The iPhone 5 dropped late last year to fantastic reviews. Estimates suggest that it will end up at 90 million units by the end of the year, but that's not enough to keep Samsung from outselling Apple.
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