By Telecom Lead Team: Worldwide mobile device sales to end users totaled 476.5
million units in the fourth quarter of 2011, a 5.4 percent increase from the
same period in 2010.
In 2011, end users bought 1.8 billion units, an 11.1
percent increase from 2010.
“Expectations for 2012 are for the overall market to
grow by about 7 percent, while smartphone growth is expected to slow to around
39 percent,” said Annette Zimmermann, principal research analyst at
Gartner.
In the fourth quarter of 2011, Nokia’s mobile phone sales
numbered 111.7 million units, an 8.7 percent decrease from last year. Samsung
closed the gap with Nokia in overall market share. Samsung profited from strong
smartphone sales of 34 million units in the fourth quarter of 2011.
The troubled economic environment in Europe and Nokia’s
weakened brand status posed challenges that were hard to overcome in just one
quarter. However, Nokia proved its ability to execute and deliver on time with
its new Lumia 710 and 800 handsets. Nokia will have to continue to offer
aggressive prices to encourage communications service providers (CSPs) to add
its products to portfolios currently dominated by Android-based devices.
Worldwide Mobile Device Sales to End Users by Vendor in
2011 (Thousands of Units)
Company |
2011 Units |
2011 Market Share ( percent) |
2010 Units |
2010 Market Share ( percent) |
Nokia |
422,478.3 |
23.8 |
461,318.2 |
28.9 |
Samsung |
313,904.2 |
17.7 |
281,065.8 |
17.6 |
Apple |
89,263.2 |
5.0 |
46,598.3 |
2.9 |
LG Electronics |
86,370.9 |
4.9 |
114,154.6 |
7.1 |
ZTE |
56,881.8 |
3.2 |
29,686.0 |
1.9 |
Research In Motion |
51,541.9 |
2.9 |
49,651.6 |
3.1 |
HTC |
43,266.9 |
2.4 |
24,688.4 |
1.5 |
Huawei |
40,663.4 |
2.3 |
23,814.7 |
1.5 |
Motorola |
40,269.0 |
2.3 |
38,553.7 |
2.4 |
Sony Ericsson |
32,597.5 |
1.8 |
41,819.2 |
2.6 |
Others |
597,326.9 |
33.7 |
485,452.0 |
30.4 |
Total |
1,774,564.1 |
100.0 |
1,596,802.4 |
100.0 |
Source: Gartner (February 2012)