It has been predicted that HTC and Samsung Electronics will be the biggest winners in the global market for cell phones during the second quarter of this fiscal year. The companies will make profits from the increasing demand for their Android based smartphones. The Android operating system created by Google has taken over the number one position in the smartphone market in only a couple of years, and analysts are quite convinced that the platform’s growth has been a huge factor in the recent success of Samsung as the company became the world’s largest cell phone producer last quarter, overtaking the 15 year reign of Nokia. LG Electronics and Nokia, the companies which have struggled to keep pace with the market for smartphones, have lost their shares of the market during this quarter, according to most analysts.
Another expert, Geoff Blaber, said that the earnings in the second quarter will reveal an increasing gap between the losers and the winners and will go on to highlight the changes in the pecking order as HTC, Samsung and Apple are increasing their market share. The financial report from Apple is due for July 19, and that of Nokia on July 21. Considering the volumes of the cell phone market on the whole, the leader is still Nokia, which has 95.5 million cell phones after a boost from its cemented position in emerging markets, Samsung is next with 73.7 million phones. However, analysts believe that the gap will be further narrowed by Samsung in the quarters to come; it is expected to displace Nokia by 2012.
According to estimates, around 16.9 million iPhones have been sold by Apple in the second quarter, which is two times the number of phones they sold last year; however the number is less than the iPhones sold last quarter as it seems that the novelty of Apple’s top of the line iPhone 4 has starting wearing off. Taiwan based HTC has also climbed up the charts quite quickly and is currently the seventh largest maker of cell phones in the world.
It has been estimated that the company has sold 11.4 million handsets in this quarter as compared to the 5.4 million phones that it sold last year. It has been reported that the market for smartphones will not be impacted much by the growing worries in economies around the world; rather it is expected to grow by a healthy 10.7% in the quarter.
