Entries Tagged as 'Smartphones'
Blogdigger Media search for Smartphones
Blogdigger Media search for Smartphones
Nokia Gets Beat Up in Smartphone Wars
Ars Technica reports:
A new study says that smartphones are still claiming territory in the cell phone market, but thanks to the struggling economy, growth dropped to its slowest pace during the fourth quarter 2008. Nokia—still the dominant manufacturer—took the most significant market share hit, as RIM, Apple, and even Samsung are landing in more pockets than ever.
Gartner's study, which covers worldwide smartphone stats for the last quarter of 2008, says that sales reached 38.1 million units, which is up just 3.7 percent from the year-ago quarter in 2007. For contrast, third quarter smartphones sales (preholiday) were up 11.5 percent over their 2007 equivalent. Gartner says that the third quarter 2008 saw a number of promising new smartphone announcements, but continuing economic troubles and prohibitively expensive data plans led to Q4's significant drop in growth. Market share musical chairs is still in effect among smartphone manufacturers, though, as Nokia continued to lose ground to feisty competition.
Nokia's sales declined over 16 percent from 18.7 million to 15.5 million units in Q4 2008, forcing the troubled handset maker to drop to a 40 percent market share. Nokia's market share losses are increasing, as it only gave up 3.1 percent during the third quarter 2008 from the year before—it gave up over 10 percent in the fourth quarter.
Data source: Gartner
The top four manufacturers that are gobbling up Nokia's shrinking slice of the smartphone pie are RIM, Apple, HTC, and for the first time, Samsung (which replaced Sharp at number five). RIM, in second place behind Nokia with 19.5 percent of the market, sold 7.4 million handsets and has nearly doubled its market share from the year before. In third place is Apple, which saw a 111.6 percent growth with 4.1 million handsets sold. This is actually a significant drop from the 327 percent growth that Apple saw during the previous quarter (no doubt thanks to the iPhone 3G's release in July), though it still doubled its share of the market from 2007 to 10.7 percent.
HTC sold 1.6 million units to increase its market share from 3.7 to 4.3 percent, though Gartner notes that the branded handsets that HTC builds for manufacturers are counted separately from its self-branded units. The biggest winner in this latest study, however, may be Samsung, which saw 138 percent growth with 1.6 million units sold. Other phones and platforms, such as Windows Mobile and Palm, are wrapped into Gartner's "Others" category. These phones saw a 22 percent drop in market share growth, thanks to selling nearly 2.5 million fewer units in the last quarter of 2008 vs. 2007.
Gartner notes a few regional statistics in its report, such as smartphones accounting for about 20 percent of sales in the US, which is a "dramatic" increase of 69 percent over the past year. The iPhone and T-Mobile G1 account for this increase, though smartphones are seeing much more competition from regular phones that offer full QWERTY keyboards and many smartphone-like features at much lower costs. Further, we also noted last November that, due to the decline in demand for cell phones, Nokia decided to pull out of the competitive Japanese handset market altogether.
Still, the focus of the overall cell phone war has shifted to mobile platforms where key features like application stores and powerful core OS functionality are on the front lines. Virtually every mobile OS—from Google Android, Windows Mobile, BlackBerry, and Palm—have either copied or will soon follow Apple's lead with the App Store. However, as long as wireless carriers continue to charge premiums for their increasingly popular data services and the economy remains stuck in a downward spiral, expect smartphone growth to continue slowing.
by David ChartierRelated Links
Smartphone Growth SlowingAT&T's Open-Source Phone PlansWhat's Good for Apple is Better for Everyone Else
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 | | Dice.com is the #1 site for tech jobs. Search thousands of positions from top employers, get expert advice and talk with tech pros. Start your job search now. |
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Tags: Smartphones
Blogdigger Media search for Smartphones
Blogdigger Media search for Smartphones
Nokia Gets Beat Up in Smartphone Wars
Ars Technica reports:
A new study says that smartphones are still claiming territory in the cell phone market, but thanks to the struggling economy, growth dropped to its slowest pace during the fourth quarter 2008. Nokia—still the dominant manufacturer—took the most significant market share hit, as RIM, Apple, and even Samsung are landing in more pockets than ever.
Gartner's study, which covers worldwide smartphone stats for the last quarter of 2008, says that sales reached 38.1 million units, which is up just 3.7 percent from the year-ago quarter in 2007. For contrast, third quarter smartphones sales (preholiday) were up 11.5 percent over their 2007 equivalent. Gartner says that the third quarter 2008 saw a number of promising new smartphone announcements, but continuing economic troubles and prohibitively expensive data plans led to Q4's significant drop in growth. Market share musical chairs is still in effect among smartphone manufacturers, though, as Nokia continued to lose ground to feisty competition.
Nokia's sales declined over 16 percent from 18.7 million to 15.5 million units in Q4 2008, forcing the troubled handset maker to drop to a 40 percent market share. Nokia's market share losses are increasing, as it only gave up 3.1 percent during the third quarter 2008 from the year before—it gave up over 10 percent in the fourth quarter.
Data source: Gartner
The top four manufacturers that are gobbling up Nokia's shrinking slice of the smartphone pie are RIM, Apple, HTC, and for the first time, Samsung (which replaced Sharp at number five). RIM, in second place behind Nokia with 19.5 percent of the market, sold 7.4 million handsets and has nearly doubled its market share from the year before. In third place is Apple, which saw a 111.6 percent growth with 4.1 million handsets sold. This is actually a significant drop from the 327 percent growth that Apple saw during the previous quarter (no doubt thanks to the iPhone 3G's release in July), though it still doubled its share of the market from 2007 to 10.7 percent.
HTC sold 1.6 million units to increase its market share from 3.7 to 4.3 percent, though Gartner notes that the branded handsets that HTC builds for manufacturers are counted separately from its self-branded units. The biggest winner in this latest study, however, may be Samsung, which saw 138 percent growth with 1.6 million units sold. Other phones and platforms, such as Windows Mobile and Palm, are wrapped into Gartner's "Others" category. These phones saw a 22 percent drop in market share growth, thanks to selling nearly 2.5 million fewer units in the last quarter of 2008 vs. 2007.
Gartner notes a few regional statistics in its report, such as smartphones accounting for about 20 percent of sales in the US, which is a "dramatic" increase of 69 percent over the past year. The iPhone and T-Mobile G1 account for this increase, though smartphones are seeing much more competition from regular phones that offer full QWERTY keyboards and many smartphone-like features at much lower costs. Further, we also noted last November that, due to the decline in demand for cell phones, Nokia decided to pull out of the competitive Japanese handset market altogether.
Still, the focus of the overall cell phone war has shifted to mobile platforms where key features like application stores and powerful core OS functionality are on the front lines. Virtually every mobile OS—from Google Android, Windows Mobile, BlackBerry, and Palm—have either copied or will soon follow Apple's lead with the App Store. However, as long as wireless carriers continue to charge premiums for their increasingly popular data services and the economy remains stuck in a downward spiral, expect smartphone growth to continue slowing.
by David ChartierRelated Links
Smartphone Growth SlowingAT&T's Open-Source Phone PlansWhat's Good for Apple is Better for Everyone Else
Presented By:
| | Dice.com is the #1 site for tech jobs. Search thousands of positions from top employers, get expert advice and talk with tech pros. Start your job search now. |
| www.Dice.com |
Tags: Smartphones