Any set of figures which show Apple gaining in the smartphone race (up 300% year on year) are bound to be heavily commented on in the USA-dominated tech media, and Gartner's Q4 (and general 2008) worldwide sales figures are no exception. Definitely worth a skim though. Symbian OS still dominates the world, powering 52% of the world's smartphones, but the lead is down 6% from the previous year. RIM continues to rise with the Blackberry OS and the iPhone is on the up and up too. In terms of manufacturers, Nokia sold 44% of all smartphones last year, roughly the same (60 million) as in 2007, with RIM and Apple clocking up 16 and 8 million respectively. The leading Windows mobile handset make, HTC, was a distant worldwide fourth, with only 4 million.
Read on in the full article.
Nokia it�s paying the price of do always more of the same, or even worse construction and quality of the same devices. As AAS Podcast said, the NSeries of 2008 it�s the more good ones, like N82 and N95 8G. Finally some competition... it�s the best for consumers. Let�s hope that RIM, Apple and HTC keep the good shape!
Yes Nokia still has 52% share lead but the most important thing to note is that the number for the 2nd year running is going Down. If that trend continues then it'll be bad news for Symbian. One thing for sure, the arrival of Apple has certainly lit a fire under Nokias Ass!
A settling pattern then, of Nokia doing mass market, RIM doing the business market and Apple picking up the premium sector (for premium read over-priced). Nokia will be quite happy with these figures, especially considering there is a number of new models coming along and the huge success of the low priced 5800 aren't included.
Odd how Samsung's growth is higher than Apple's in the 4Q table but they don't even show up in the annual table. Also interesting how RIM have done well; I'm guessing that this is due to increased awareness and uptake of smartphones in the US, that is, people who don't want an iPhone think that a Blackberry is the obvious alternative. I really would be interested to see the changing shape of the global market: you showed some figures a couple of years back that showed the US market as being pretty-much insignificant. I suspect that is now starting to change.
Steve, it may be drifting a little off-topic for AAS, but I happen to agree with your views on the increasingly blurry distinction between smart and dumb phones, so are there figures around for mobile devices in general?
Neil, I keep a watch on all figures and will bring you some generic 'phone' stats when I can, don't worry.
Steve
The blurry distinction between smart n dumbphones are due to Nokia, and Nokia only. Nobody else comes even close. I fully expect Nokia to kick ass again this year, with regards to the current economic situation.
Worth realising that pretty much the only practical difference from a user's point of view between Nokia smartphones and Nokia non smartphones is the ability to install apps on the native OS. While being able to do so is obviously a good thing, one needs to get perspective on this, and realise that with the increasing sophistication of Java (J2ME/MIDP), and in the latest handets Java fragmentation problems being much less than they were, and the inclusion of the highly sophisticated WebKit browser in Nokia non smartphones, that actually in real terms the difference to end users between whether a phone is "smart" or not, is much smaller than it used to be, and diminishing rapidly (and will inevitably eventually disappear).
When you factor in Nokia's easy dominance of non smartphone sales worldwide, and that they arguably make the best hardware, one can see they're in an excellent position overall.
All that said, competition is always a very good and healthy thing, and it is actually encouraging for the quality of Nokia products to see a strong competitive force. It means Nokia products will inevitably be better for us all.
In fact, thanks to competition, finally Nokia is about to launch an app store.