Weak Smartphone Sales in 2009 Are Nokia's Fault

The overall mobile phone market has seen a small decline during the ongoing year, as sales have been greatly affected by the financial downturn; yet, the smartphone segment managed to show growth throughout the entire year 2009, it seems. These device are expected to account for around 14 percent of the total handset market around the world, research firm Gartner notes, pointing out that the take up of smartphones has been slower than originally expected.

Compared to 2008, the research firm expects for smartphones to show a 24 percent increase, though it has originally predicted for an even greater increase during the ongoing year. “We were counting on a 29 percent [increase] for 2009, and up to Q2 we were right on track,” said Carolina Milanesi, research director at Gartner.

The research firm also notes that, starting with the third quarter of the year, smartphone sales have started to slow down, and that the main issue for this is Nokia's weak performance on the market. The company is said to not have delivered attractive high-end smartphones on the market, and further suggests that users were not looking towards other handset vendors for a purchase either, something that affected the overall market, it seems.

According to Gartner, smartphones should account for more than one third of the mobile phone market by 2013, while the global handset market is also expected to increase. During 2009, the market of mobile phones is said to have shrunk with less than one percent, with a total number of 1.2 billion units sold. In 2010, Gartner expects for the market to start growing again.

As many of you might already know, Nokia is also reported to have lost the leading position on the UK market in favor of Samsung. The South Korean handset vendor was targeting leadership on the European market for quite a while now, and it seems that it is slowly moving towards achieving its goal. However, Nokia might unveil some more appealing handsets next year, especially since it plans a revamped Symbian platform and a new version of Maemo.