Apple shoots past Samsung to nab top smartphone spot
APPLE is again the top smartphone vendor in the world after selling 35.5m smartphones in the fourth quarter of last year and growing its market share to 23.8 per cent, according to research from Gartner.
Samsung was hot on Apple’s heels, selling 34m out of the total 149m smartphones sold in the quarter.
Around 472m smartphones were sold in 2011, accounting for 31 per cent of all mobile phone sales – up 58 per cent on 2010 largely thanks to Apple’s Christmas boom which increased iPhone sales by 121 per cent.
Despite remaining the top vendor of mobile devices, Nokia lost almost four per cent of the market to rivals as its sales dropped by 8.7 per cent to 111.7m.
Samsung’s mobile device sales grew 17 per cent to 92.7m in the quarter, giving the South Korean company a market share of 19.4 per cent.
Apple – which only sells smartphones – doubled its share of the mobile phone market to 7.4 per cent, coming in at third place.
Sales of LG phones almost halved, booting the electronics group to fifth place, as China’s growing ZTE more than doubled its market share on sales of its low-cost smartphones.
Research in Motion continued to disappoint, dropping to seventh spot in the mobile device league table as sales declined 10.8 per cent to 13.2m.