Gartner, a firm that supplies technology research to business leaders worldwide has published its Q4 report which confirms the fact that Apple is the leading smartphone manufacturer for the year 2011 with 19 per cent market share. It is estimated that around 35.5 million iPhone handsets were sold in the fourth quarter, which is a whopping 121.4 percent more than the numbers reported for the same quarter last year. Apple has also increased its standing in terms of number of all mobile phones sold where it secured the third place, overtaking LG.
Principal Research Analyst at Gartner, Annette Zimmermann believes that smartphone growth will probably slow by almost 39 percent as the smartphone market is quite well-established. The market for mobile phones will increase by almost 7 per cent this year. According to Gartner, Q4 saw a total of 476.5 million mobile phones being sold to customers and for the whole of 2011 the figure is around 1.8 billion units, which is about 11 percent more than last year. Gartner has also concluded that of the 472 million smartphone units sold internationally in all of 2011, 149 million units were sold in the fourth quarter itself. Android OS smartphones accounted for almost 50.9 per cent of the smartphone market in 2011 but this figure is still less than the 53 per cent it achieved last year. It is estimated that smartphone sales have contributed to almost 31 per cent of all mobile phone sales.
Nokia saw its stock dipping continuously throughout 2011 as it steadily lost market share to rival Android OS based smartphones. For the fourth quarter, Nokia managed to sell around 111.7 million units, which is a significant 8.7% decrease from the statistics for 2010. Nokia managed to release the Windows Mango based Lumia 710 and 800 handsets which have somewhat improved the company’s brand image and improved sales. Other companies who have also not performed well in Q4 2011 are Research In Motion (RIM), Motorola, Sony Ericsson and LG as they failed to attract customers with their devices.
On the other hand, South Korea-based Samsung has made a lot of progress in the year 2011 and improved its standing in the smartphone market with its Android based devices. Gartner reports that Samsung has sold an impressive 34 million smartphone units for the fourth quarter. It is also reported that lower-end smartphone manufacturers like Huawei and ZTE posted good results during the same time period.
