Telecom Lead Europe: Samsung, the World’s leader in
smartphone, has extended its lead over Apple and Nokia with 21.6 percent global
market share of handset market in the second quarter of 2012, according to
Gartner.
During the quarter, Samsung shipped over 90.4 million handsets.
Samsung’s growth was driven by sales of Galaxy smartphones, which now account
for 50.4 percent of all Samsung mobile devices, or 45.6 million units.
Nokia’s global handset market share recorded at 19.9
percent, declined from 22.8 percent for the same quarter a year earlier. Nokia
shipped around 83.4 million handsets during the second quarter of 2012.
On the other hand, consumer demand for the Apple
iPhone weakened as sales fell 12.6 percent from the first quarter of 2012, but
grew 47.4 percent year on year.
Apple holds 6.9 percent share of the global handset
market, during the quarter, it shipped 28.9 million handsets. Gartner
anticipated that the company could experience another weaker-than-usual quarter
in the third quarter of 2012, due to uncertainty over launch date of the new
iPhone.
Worldwide sales of mobile phones to end users
reached 419 million units in the second quarter of 2012, a 2.3 percent decline
from the second quarter of 2011.
According to Gartner, Smartphone sales accounted for 36.7
percent of total mobile phone sales and grew 42.7 percent in the second quarter
of 2012.
Chinese handset maker ZTE has raised its handset
market share to 4.3 percent, with 17.9 million units shipped. LG stood at fifth
position with 3.4 percent market share with 14.3 million units shipped.
Market share of Research in Motion (RIM), maker of
BlackBerry smartphone, has yet again plunged at 1.9 percent with 7.9 million
units shipped.
Anshul Gupta, principal research analyst at Gartner said
that the challenging economic environment and users postponing upgrades to take
advantage of high-profile device launches and promotions available later in the
year slowed demand across markets. Demand of feature phones continued to
decline, significantly weakening the overall mobile phone market.
In terms of smartphone OS market, Android leads the
market with 64 percent market share, while Apple’s iOS market share slightly
grew year over year at 18.8 market share.
Market share of Symbian OS dived at 5.9 percent, as
compared to 22.1 percent global market share for the second quarter of 2011.
RIM’s OS market share stood at 5.2 percent, while Bada’s market share recorded
at 2.7 percent.
Microsoft’s market share increased at 2.7 percent with
over 4 million handsets shipped.
