Smartphones are on the rise, according to new data from Gartner, which revealed several firsts in the industry.
Worldwide mobile phone sales totaled 269.1 million units in the first
quarter of 2009 — an 8.6 percent decrease from the first quarter of
2008, Gartner reports — while smartphone sales increased 12.7 percent
from the same period last year, totaling more than 36.4 million units
for the quarter.
Smartphones now represent 13.5 percent of all mobile device sales, up from 11 percent in the first quarter of 2008.
“There were some signs of recovering in markets such as North America
and China, but overall sales in the first quarter of 2009 registered
the biggest quarter-on-quarter contraction since Gartner began
monitoring the market on a quarterly basis in 2001,” Carolina Milanesi,
an analyst with Gartner, wrote in the May 20 report.
“This was also the first year the market contracted year over year
during the first quarter, a period traditionally helped by strong
seasonality in the Asia/Pacific market,” Milanesi added.
Nokia again led worldwide smartphone sales to end users in the first
quarter of 2009, shipping just shy of 15 million units, though market
share fell from 45.1 percent a year earlier to 41.2 percent.
BlackBerry maker Research In Motion again took second position,
shipping 7.2 million smartphones and bumping its market share from 13.3
percent to 19.9 percent.
In third place, Apple more than doubled its market share from the first quarter of 2008, jumping from 5.3 percent to 10.8 percent, with shipments of 3.9 million units.
HTC pulled ahead of Fujitsu, raising its market share from 4 percent to 5.4
percent and shipping 1.9 million units. And the fifth-place Fujitsu,
with its share falling to 3.8 from 4.1, shipped 1.4 million units.
“Much of the smartphone growth during the first quarter of 2009 was driven by touch-screen products,
both mid-tier and high-end devices,” wrote Robert Cozza, another
analyst. “‘Touch for the sake of touch’ was enough of a driver in the
mid-tier space, but tighter integration with applications and services
around music, mobile e-mail and Internet browsing made the difference at
the high end of the market.”
Worldwide, Symbian was the leading smartphone operating system,
though market share fell from 56.9 percent to 49.3 percent. RIM’s
smartphone OS followed, with 19.9 percent of the market, up from 13.3
percent a year earlier. And finally the Apple iPhone OS, which grew its
market share to 10.8 percent, from 5.3 percent a year earlier, was the
third most popular smartphone operating system.
Gartner reports that the channel intensified its efforts to reduce
stock levels in the quarter, and sales into the channel were just short
of 244 million units. Sales to users, however, were just over 269
million units — a difference of 25 million units from the fourth
quarter of 2008, which Gartner notes is the biggest difference it has
ever recorded.
“With inventory-reduction efforts expected to continue in the second
quarter of 2009, although to a lesser extent than what we have seen so
far … we remain confident that overall sales to users for 2009 will
remain considerably higher than the sell-in that many vendors are
expecting,” wrote Milanesi. “Device vendors will focus increasingly on
smartphones, improved user interfaces and services to differentiate
themselves and fuel consumer demand.”
Milanesi went on to say that Gartner expects sales to users to decrease
by 4 percent in 2009, from 2008 numbers, and for sell-in to slow by 10
percent.
 |
Enterprise Mobility News & Reviews 
