According to a report from research firm Gartner, Apple and Samsung increased their share of the global mobile phone market as Nokia, LG and RIM saw a fall in their respective shares. The report was based on smartphone sales in the second quarter of 2012 and the firm says that global smartphone sales fell by 2.3% due to expected future releases of new devices and poor economies in critical markets. The number of smartphones sold in Q2 of 2012 was 419 million as opposed to nearly 430 million in the same period last year.
Despite the slight slump in sales, the second quarter was good for Samsung as it held a 21.6% market share, the highest among all vendors. This was a significant rise over the previous year during the same period where it had only 16.3% of the market in its grasp. The company’s growth in the sector was because of the large increase in sales of the Galaxy line of smartphones and right now smartphones account for more than 50% of the company’s sales. In addition, the recently released Galaxy S III was selling through the roof and exceeded Samsung’s own high expectations.
If not for a shortfall in the inventory, its sales would have been even higher according to Gartner. The second quarter was good even for Apple as it held a 6.9% market share, up from 4.6% in the previous year. It was quite weak compared to the previous quarter of 2012 as the iPhone sales dropped but the next quarter is likely going to be better as Apple plans to release the iPhone 5 in September.
Nokia continued in its second position, holding on to a 19.9% share which was mainly because of its non smartphone devices in lower end markets. It was a drop from the same quarter in 2011 when it had a share of nearly 23%. The Lumia devices from the company are not performing as expected and are falling to the Android phones from various manufacturers. Meanwhile, Blackberry manufacturer RIM had a meager 1.9% share in the quarter, which is a fall from 3% in the previous year. LG’s share also fell to 3.4% from 5.7%.
The interesting trend is that smartphone sales made up a large chunk in the second quarter and this figure is bound to rise as consumers are becoming more data intensive and using more mobile services.
