Gartner: Apple Improves Marketshare, Now 3rd Largest Smartphone Maker

• Posted: Tuesday, December 09, 2008
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• Author: pradhana
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• Filed under: Apple, Market Survey

Research firm Gartner said 36.5 million smartphones were sold in the third-quarter this year, an 11.5% increase from last year, but a slowdown from the 15.7% annual growth seen in the second quarter.

Roberta Cozza, Gartner’s principal analyst, said that sales of the higher end devices are affected by the current negative economic climate. She added that the growth of smartphone device market should be expected to continue to move at a slower pace.

Speaking of market leader Nokia: “The company introduced solid Nseries products with top features, but its lack of a commercial touch-screen device in its smartphone portfolio prevented Nokia from capitalising from consumer demand for this feature. The recently announced N97 is a much needed evolution for the n9x series of products. It is unfortunate that the device will not be available before the first half of 2009 as this is a competitive product in today’s market.”

Apple, on the other hand, improved its market share to 12.9 per cent in the third quarter of 2008 with a shipment of 7 million units. The increase in the company’s sales reached to more than four times compares to the same period in 2007. The success of the iPhone 3G sales is due to its wider geographical availability, new business model, and lower pricing as opposed to Microsoft’s lack of a competitive user interface.

North America was the fastest growing market with a 68 per cent increase; 56 per cent in Latin America; and 14 per cent increase in the sales in Europe, the Middle East and Africa (EMEA). The markets in Asia/Pacific and Japan, however, posted an 11 per cent and 23 per cent decline respectively. [Cpmmsday]

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