Technology giants Apple and Samsung were crowned as kings of the global market for smartphones, based on the amount of devices sold in the third quarter of this year. Global sales of mobile phones in the third quarter of 2012 are decreased by 3%, but those of smartphones have increased substantially, by 47%. It is Samsung that dominates this market segment with its Android smartphones, followed by Apple with the iPhone.
Gartner has just shared online new data on sales of mobile phones in Q3 2012, and found that, overall, in the three-month period 427 million mobile handsets were sold, 3% less than in the third quarter of last year, but slightly more than 419 million mobile phones sold in the second quarter. Samsung improved its market share from 18.7% to 22.9%, while Nokia’s fell from 23.9% to 19.2%. Third position goes to Apple with 5.5% (previous year: 3.9%).
Amid falling sales of mobile phones compared to the same period last year, the popularity of smartphones has increased significantly. Implementation of this device category has grown by 46.9% — from 115.2 million units in 2011 to 169.2 million units. Currently, the share of smartphones in the sales of mobile devices is 39.6%.
Samsung is the undisputed leader of the mobile market: in Q3 2012, the company has sold nearly 98 million mobile phones, of which 55 million are smartphones especially in the series Samsung Galaxy S3. These numbers allow the South Korean group to reach a market share of 32.5%. Apple, meanwhile, sold 23.6 million smartphones (iPhone) in the quarter and won second place at Gartner. It was followed by RIM with BlackBerry in third place, HTC fourth, and Nokia slips from third to seventh place with Windows Phone. The outlook for these companies are not optimistic, so much so that Gartner points out that “it is HTC that RIM have seen their sales decline in recent quarters, and will face new challenges in the near future that may prevent them in the future to maintain the places that have current ranking.”
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“After two consecutive quarters of decline in mobile phone sales, demand has improved in both mature and emerging markets as sales increased sequentially,” Anshul Gupta, principal research analyst at Gartner, said in a company release. “In China, sales of mobile phones grew, driven by sales of smartphones, while demand of feature phones remained weak. In mature markets, we finally saw replacement sales pick up with the launch of new devices in the quarter.”
With the upcoming holiday season and recent launch of the iPhone 5, Gartner predicts the Apple figure to grow over the next few months.
“We saw inventory build up into the channel as Apple prepared for the coming holiday season, global expansions and the launch into China in the fourth quarter of 2012,” said Gupta. “With iPhone 5 launching in more territories in the fourth quarter of 2012, including China, and the upcoming holiday season, Gartner analysts expect Apple will have its traditionally strongest quarter.”
With regard to operating systems, Google’s Android dominates the market, especially with the help of Samsung, with a share of 72.4%, followed by Apple’s iOS with 13.9%, and RIM’s BlackBerry OS with 5.3%. Samsung’s Bada has a share of 3.0%, Nokia’s Symbian with 2.6%, Microsoft’s Windows Phone 2.4% and other OS together have 0.4% of the market.
