Worldwide mobile phone sales to end users totalled 314.7 million units in the first quarter of 2010, a 17% increase from the same period in 2009, according to Gartner. Smartphone sales to end users reached 54.3 million units, an increase of 48.7% from the first quarter of 2009. With Android phones seeing a 707% growth in the US
According to Gartner the most successful mobile vendors were those that controlled an integrated set of operating system (OS), hardware and services.
“In the first quarter of 2010, smartphone sales to end users saw their strongest year-on-year increase since 2006,” said Carolina Milanesi, research vice president at Gartner. “This quarter saw RIM, a pure smartphone player, make its debut in the top five mobile devices manufacturers, and saw Apple increase its market share by 1.2 percentage points. Android’s momentum continued into the first quarter of 2010, particularly in North America, where sales of Android-based phones increased 707% year-on-year.
Growth in the mobile devices market was driven by double-digit growth of smartphone sales in mature markets, helped by wider product availability as well as mass market price tags. “Increasing sales of white-box products in some emerging regions, in particular India, also drove sales of mobile phones upward. We expect sales of white-box products to remain very healthy for the remainder of 2010, especially outside of China,” said Ms Milanesi.
The rise of white-box manufacturers from Asia has also helped the “others” section, as a proportion of overall sales, increase its market share to 19.20% in the first quarter of 2010, up 2.7 percentage points. “This is having a profound effect on the top five mobile handset manufacturers’ combined share that dropped from 73.3 in the first quarter of 2009 to 70.7% in the first quarter of 2010,” said Ms Milanesi.
Worldwide Mobile Terminal Sales to End Users in 1Q10 (Thousands of Units)
| Company | 1Q10
Units |
1Q10 Market Share (%) | 1Q09
Units |
1Q09 Market Share (%) |
| Nokia | 110,105.6 | 35.0 | 97,398.2 | 36.2 |
| Samsung | 64,897.1 | 20.6 | 51,385.4 | 19.1 |
| LG | 27,190.1 | 8.6 | 26,546.9 | 9.9 |
| RIM | 10,552.5 | 3.4 | 7,233.5 | 2.7 |
| Sony Ericsson | 9,865.6 | 3.1 | 14,470.3 | 5.4 |
| Motorola | 9,574.5 | 3.0 | 16,587.3 | 6.2 |
| Apple | 8,359.7 | 2.7 | 3,938.8 | 1.5 |
| ZTE | 5,375.4 | 1.7 | 3,369.6 | 1.3 |
| G-Five | 4,345.0 | 1.4 | ||
| Huawei | 3,970.0 | 1.3 | 3,217.9 | 1.2 |
| Others | 60,418.1 | 19.2 | 44,972.2 | 16.5 |
| Total | 314,653.50 | 100.0 | 269,120.10 | 100.0 |
Source: Gartner (May 2010)
The first quarter of 2010 was Apple’s strongest quarter yet, which placed the company in the No. 7 position with a 112.2% increase in mobile devices sales. “Growth came partly from new communication service providers in established markets, such as the UK, and stronger sales in new markets such as China and South Korea,” said Ms Milanesi. “The second quarter of 2010 will be a very important one for Apple. We expect that Apple will present its new iPhone in June during its Worldwide Developer Conference, which will be the first to feature the latest release of the iPhone OS that includes welcome improvements for developers and users, such as multitasking.”
In the smartphone OS market, Android and Apple were the winners in the first quarter of 2010 (see table below). Android moved to the No. 4 position displacing Microsoft Windows Mobile for the first time. Both Android and Apple were the only two OSs vendors among the top five to increase market share year-on-year. Symbian remained in the No. 1 position but continued to lose as Nokia remains weak in the high-end portfolio.
Smartphones accounted for 17.3% of all mobile handset sales in the first quarter of 2010, up from 13.6% in the same period in 2009.
Worldwide Smartphone Sales to End Users by Operating System in 1Q10 (Thousands of Units)
| Company | 1Q10
Units |
1Q10 Market Share (%) | 1Q09
Units |
1Q09 Market Share (%) |
| Symbian | 24,069.8 | 44.3 | 17,825.3 | 48.8 |
| Research In Motion | 10,552.6 | 19.4 | 7,533.6 | 20.6 |
| iPhone OS | 8,359.7 | 15.4 | 3,848.1 | 10.5 |
| Android | 5,214.7 | 9.6 | 575.3 | 1.6 |
| Microsoft Windows Mobile | 3,706.0 | 6.8 | 3,738.7 | 10.2 |
| Linux | 1,993.9 | 3.7 | 2,540.5 | 7.0 |
| Other OSs | 404.8 | 0.7 | 445.9 | 1.2 |
| Total | 54,301.4 | 100.0 | 36,507.4 | 100.0 |
Source: Gartner (May 2010)
As seen with the iPad and web books based on Google’s Android platform, mobile OS ecosystems are developing and will move beyond smartphones to continue to deliver consumer value and a rich user experience,” said Roberta Cozza, principal research analyst at Gartner.
Mobile e-mail, rich messaging and social networking will continue to drive demand for smartphones and enhanced phones that feature full qwerty hardware keyboards. “To compete in such a crowded market, manufacturers need to tightly integrate hardware, user interface, and cloud and social networking services if their solutions are to appeal to users,” said Ms Cozza. “Just adding a qwerty keyboard will not make a device fit the communication’s habits of today’s various consumer segments.”