-
- News
- Books
Featured Books
- smt007 Magazine
Latest Issues
Current IssueBox Build
One trend is to add box build and final assembly to your product offering. In this issue, we explore the opportunities and risks of adding system assembly to your service portfolio.
IPC APEX EXPO 2024 Pre-show
This month’s issue devotes its pages to a comprehensive preview of the IPC APEX EXPO 2024 event. Whether your role is technical or business, if you're new-to-the-industry or seasoned veteran, you'll find value throughout this program.
Boost Your Sales
Every part of your business can be evaluated as a process, including your sales funnel. Optimizing your selling process requires a coordinated effort between marketing and sales. In this issue, industry experts in marketing and sales offer their best advice on how to boost your sales efforts.
- Articles
- Columns
Search Console
- Links
- Events
||| MENU - smt007 Magazine
Gartner: Worldwide Mobile Phone Sales Grew 17% YoY in Q01 2010, Smartphone Sales Grew 48.7%
May 19, 2010 |Estimated reading time: 5 minutes
STAMFORD, CT and EGHAM, U.K. — Worldwide mobile phone sales to end users totalled 314.7 million units in the first quarter of 2010, a 17% increase from the same period in 2009, according to Gartner Inc. Smartphone sales to end users reached 54.3 million units, an increase of 48.7% from the first quarter of 2009. Among the most successful vendors were those that controlled an integrated set of operating system (OS), hardware and services.
"In the first quarter of 2010, smartphone sales to end users saw their strongest year-on-year increase since 2006," said Carolina Milanesi, research vice president at Gartner. “This quarter saw RIM, a pure smartphone player, make its debut in the top five mobile devices manufacturers, and saw Apple increase its market share by 1.2 percentage points. Android’s momentum continued into the first quarter of 2010, particularly in North America, where sales of Android-based phones increased 707% year-on-year (YoY).”
Growth in the mobile devices market was driven by double-digit growth of smartphone sales in mature markets, helped by wider product availability as well as mass market price tags. “Increasing sales of white-box products in some emerging regions, in particular India, also drove sales of mobile phones upward. We expect sales of white-box products to remain very healthy for the remainder of 2010, especially outside of China,” said Milanesi.
The first quarter also saw some movement outside the top five mobile handset vendor rankings (Table 1). Hong Kong-based manufacturer G-Five made its debut into the top 10, grabbing 1.4% of market share in the first quarter of 2010. The rise of white-box manufacturers from Asia has also helped the "others" section, as a proportion of overall sales, increase its market share to 19.20% in the first quarter of 2010, up 2.7 percentage points. “This is having a profound effect on the top five mobile handset manufacturers’ combined share that dropped from 73.3 in the first quarter of 2009 to 70.7% in the first quarter of 2010,” said Milanesi.
Table 1. Worldwide mobile terminal sales to end users in 1Q10 (thousands of units). Source: Gartner (May 2010).Company 1Q10 Units 1Q10 Market Share (%) 1Q09 Units 1Q09 Market Share (%)
Nokia
110,105.6 35.097,398.236.2Samsung 64,897.1 20.651,385.419.1LG 27,190.18.626,546.99.9RIM 10,552.53.47,233.52.7Sony Ericsson 9,865.63.114,470.35.4Motorola 9,574.53.0 16,587.3 6.2Apple 8,359.7 2.73,938.81.5ZTE 5,375.4 1.7 3,369.61.3G-Five 4,345.0 1.4
-
-
Huawei 3,970.0 1.33,217.9 1.2Others 60,418.1 19.2 44,972.2 16.5Total 314,653.50100.0269,120.10 100.0In the first quarter of 2010, Nokia's mobile phone sales to end users reached 110.1 million units, a 1.2% decline in market share year-on-year. Although Nokia's midtier products sold well, Nokia lacks a high-volume driver in the high-end. “MeeGo based devices and other high-end products will not rejuvenate Nokia's premium portfolio until the end of the third quarter of 2010 at the earliest, and Nokia will continue to feel pressure on its average selling price (ASP) from vendors such as HTC, RIM and Samsung,” said Milanesi. The reorganization announced recently demonstrated that Nokia is trying to streamline the reporting process to deliver results quickly, which Gartner believes shows its recognition of the pressure it faces from investors.”
Samsung sold 64.9 million devices in the first quarter of 2010, an increase of 26.3% YoY. Samsung was one of the five vendors in the top 10 vendors ranking to grow its market share, which increased by 1.5 percentage points year-on-year. Samsung saw healthy margins in the first quarter of 2010 and was also able to grow its presence in developing markets such as India and the Commonwealth of Independent States.
RIM’s mobile phone sales reached 10.6 million units in the first quarter of 2010, a 45.9% increase YoY. RIM is making its debut into the top five worldwide mobile handset manufacturers ranking. RIM's focus this quarter was centered on its ecosystem strategy, its tightly integrated control of store, OS and device played to RIM’s strengths.
Sony Ericsson sold enough units to remain in the top five mobile handset manufacturers, but its market share declined 2.3 percentage points in the first quarter of 2010. The channel held some inventory for Sony Ericsson in the first quarter of 2010 as some new products reached the channel late into the quarter. One of Sony Ericsson's most important future differentiators is its relationship with its parent company, Sony. This partnership, combined with Sony Ericsson’s ownership of the strongest portfolio it has had since 2007, place it well to lead the trend toward increasingly connected consumer devices.
The first quarter of 2010 was Apple’s strongest quarter yet, which placed the company in the No. 7 position with a 112.2% increase in mobile devices sales. “Growth came partly from new communication service providers in established markets, such as the UK, and stronger sales in new markets such as China and South Korea,” said Milanesi. “The second quarter of 2010 will be a very important one for Apple. We expect that Apple will present its new iPhone in June during its Worldwide Developer Conference, which will be the first to feature the latest release of the iPhone OS that includes welcome improvements for developers and users, such as multitasking.”
In the smartphone OS market, Android and Apple were the winners in the first quarter of 2010 (Table 2). Android moved to the No. 4 position displacing Microsoft Windows Mobile for the first time. Both Android and Apple were the only two OS vendors among the top five to increase market share year-on-year. Symbian remained in the No. 1 position but continued to lose as Nokia remains weak in the high-end portfolio.Smartphones accounted for 17.3% of all mobile handset sales in the first quarter of 2010, up from 13.6% in the same period in 2009.
As seen with the iPad and web books based on Google's Android platform, mobile OS ecosystems are developing and will move beyond smartphones to continue to deliver consumer value and a rich user experience,” said Roberta Cozza, principal research analyst at Gartner.
Table 2. Worldwide smartphone sales to end users by operating system (OS) in 1Q10 (thousands of units). Source: Gartner (May 2010).Company 1Q10 Units1Q10 Market Share (%)1Q09 Units 1Q09 Market Share (%)Symbian 24,069.844.3 17,825.348.8Research In Motion 10,552.6 19.4 7,533.620.6iPhone OS 8,359.715.43,848.110.5Android 5,214.7 9.6 575.3 1.6Microsoft Windows Mobile 3,706.0 6.83,738.7 10.2Linux1,993.93.72,540.57.0Other OS404.80.7445.91.2Total 54,301.4 100.036,507.4100.0Mobile e-mail, rich messaging and social networking will continue to drive demand for smartphones and enhanced phones that feature full qwerty hardware keyboards. “To compete in such a crowded market, manufacturers need to tightly integrate hardware, user interface, and cloud and social networking services if their solutions are to appeal to users,” said Cozza. “Just adding a qwerty keyboard will not make a device fit the communication’s habits of today's various consumer segments.”
Additional information is in the Gartner report "Competitive Landscape: Mobile Devices, Worldwide, 1Q10." The report is available on Gartner's website at www.gartner.com. Gartner Inc. (NYSE: IT) is an information technology research and advisory company. Through the resources of Gartner Research, Gartner Executive Programs, Gartner Consulting and Gartner Events, Gartner works with every client to research, analyze and interpret the business of IT within the context of their individual role.
Join the PennWell SMT Group on LinkedIn
Become a Fan on SMT's Facebook Page
Post your electronics manufacturing, SMT-related material to the #SMT community on Twitter. Use the #SMT hashtag.