Research firm IDC has issued worldwide figures for smartphone sales for 2006, reporting that 80 million shipped in all, of which Nokia accounted for around half, 38 million devices. RIM's Blackberry came in second with 7 million, with Motorola's Windows Mobile portfolio in third, at almost 5 million. (via RingNokia)
Read on in the full article.
I edited the news post to note that a proportion of Motorola's smartphones come from its Linux portfolio (e.g. the Ming).
Its also worth noting that IDC have a relatively loose interpretation of what constitutes a smartphone.
Okay so;
38M+7M+5M =50M
So where are the 30Million others coming from that are made up by companies that are all selling less than the 5Million of Motorola? That just doesn't sound right! I also suspect that Motorola didn't really sell more smartphones last year than HTC, but that IDC have lost HTC's figures amongst all the different names and brands they sell under (Palm, iMate, Dopod, XDA, MDA etc.).
Still, I'm quite surprised the figures are so low for Nokia. I thought Nokia just told us they has sold 100 Million S60 phones last year (or was that total?) and that they had about 80% of the market?
EDIT
Just looking at the IDC press release itself, rather than the business week reporting of it, so much of the reporting is completely wrong. Firstly, IDC's report is for converged devices, not for Smartphones. Now, what you would define as a converged device and what a smartphone is open to huge interpretation (under theirs my wifes SE K750i qualifies), but the original report never mentions the word smartphone.
Secondly, Motorola aren't 3rd for 2006, they are fourth. For the last quarter of 2006 they sold a handful more units than sharp but for the year it was Panasonic who were 3rd with Motorola 4th and NEC 5th. It looks like the Asian market is dominating outside the top two. In fact, IDC state the launch of the A1200 in china as the main reason for Motorola's sudden growth (and predicting huge sales in Latin amreica this year), with the Moto Q getting an "also" mention for North American sales.
Sorry, I know you guys are just reporting what Business Week said and that, from your point of view, it's the Nokia share at the top that's of interest, but business week have basically got everything other than the Nokia figures wrong!
These figures tally roughly with Canalys: http://www.canalys.com/pr/2007/r2007024.htm
Regarding the extra 30 million, yes, I suspect that's divided up between all the dozens of network and manufacturer rebrands, plus of course Sony Ericsson and NTT DoCoMo in the Symbian OS world. All with less than 5 million each, but they all add up.
And yes, the 100 million figure was an accumulated total, IIRC 8-)
Steve
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