Few will be shocked to learn that smartphone shipments worldwide surged almost 40 percent in the fourth quarter over the same period in 2008, according to IDC.
Even fewer will think it surprising that Apple iPhone shipments climbed almost 82 percent for the full year 2009 over 2008 to 25.1 million units worldwide. For Q4, Apple’s growth was even higher, at almost 98 percent on sales of 8.7 million units, giving Apple a third place ranking in market share for both the year and the quarter.
In total, smartphones won a share of 15.4 percent of all mobile phones in 2009, up from 12.7 percent of 2008 shipments. But for the bulk of the year, smartphone increases were narrow, followed by the surge in the last few months, when suppliers shipped 54.5 million units worldwide.
For the full year 2009, suppliers shipped 174.2 million units worldwide, up just over 15 percent from 151.4 million units in 2008.
IDC foresees more smartphone gains in 2010 ,especially as the Windows and Symbian phone OS’s are expected to receive updates. Some of the gains from last year it attributed to the release of Google’s Android and Palm’s webOS.
Nokia remained the market leader last year, with only a slight drop in share for the full year to about 39 percent from 40 percent in 2008 on shipments of 67.7 million units. Research in Motion lost share, seeing a decline from almost 20 percent of shipments to 15.6 percent on sales of 34.5 million units. Apple appeared to pick up the slack as its share climbed to 14.4 percent from 9.1 percent in 2009 over the year earlier.
Source: IDC. To view the full release with market share charts see http://www.idc.com/getdoc.jsp?containerId=prUS22196610.
