According to a report by Gartner, contribution by Nokia has surpasses others in the mobile phone market share during the second quarter of this year. The Gartner data also reveals that second quarter of 2011 registered a 16.5 percent rise in the overall sales of mobile phone devices worldwide, with a total of 428.7 million units. In the same quarter in 2010, approximately 368 million handsets were sold to end users.
The sell-in demand for mobile devices also slowed down in this quarter, a 4.4 percent decrease than the previous quarter. On the other hand, the global smartphone sales went up 74 percent, thus contributing as 25 percent of the overall mobile phone market shares, higher than the 17 percent part it formed in 2Q10.
“Smartphone sales continued to rise at the expense of feature phones,” said Roberta Cozza, principal research analyst at Gartner. “Consumers in mature markets are choosing entry-level and midrange Android smartphones over feature phones, partly due to carriers’ and manufacturers’ promotions.”
Nokia was followed by Samsung, LG, and Apple. RIM in the fifth position was replaced by ZTE. Although leading the pack, Nokia’s smartphone sales weren’t promising. The discouraging demand for Symbian, combined with a competitive market, and the Nokia inventory management issues in Europe and China are said to be the principal factors causing a low in the company’s smartphone market shares.
On the smartphone operating system market, Android held the top position with 43.4 percent market share, followed by Symbian and iOS. Analysts at Gartner observed that the market share of Android and iOS was nearly 62 percent, up to 31 percent more than last year. They say it can be credited to the usability of the OS and services offered by the platform operator.
Observing this growth in the current mobile phone and smartphone market scenario, Gartner looks forward to roughly 12 percent rise in the sales further this year.