Apple added another feather in its cap in 2011, and according to Gartner, moved to the third spot in a list of the world’s largest mobile phone vendors. The latest market share report from Gartner covers not only the last quarter of 2011 but the entire year too. The data also shows that Apple was in the top position, as far as only smartphones are concerned, albeit by a small margin.
Apple had a 23.8% share in the final quarter of the year, and a 19% share of the smartphone market overall (for all of 2011). Apple only manufactures smartphones, and does not have any ‘feature phones’ for low-end consumers. However, Apple’s phenomenal sales of smartphones moved it to the third spot even where ALL mobile sales were considered. This is a pretty astonishing fact, as Apple left behind companies such as LG and is itself behind only Samsung (2nd) and Nokia (1st).
472 million smartphones were sold in 2011 out of which there were 89.2 million units by Apple. Apple’s success with sales is expected to continue well into the first quarter of the year. This is due to the iPhone 4S’s increasing availability. A drop in sales is inevitable though. Hype surrounding the device will die down at some point.
As far as mobile operating systems are concerned, Apple’s iOS fell behind Google’s Android OS. Google grabbed 50.9% of the total market share whereas Apple took only 23.8%. Nokia’s Symbian (11.7%), RIM (8.8%), Samsung’s Bada (2.1%) and Microsoft’s Windows Phone (1.9%) succeeded Apple.
iOS has still shown an 8% increase year over year since 2010. Again, that’s pretty remarkable for a platform that is only available on three smartphone models- iPhone 4S, iPhone 4 and iPhone 3GS.
An eventual drop is expected in Apple’s iOS share due to slowing of the iPhone 4S upgrade cycle.
[ Liked it? Don't forget to +1 this ]
