14 DAY TRIAL // Google's Android operating system managed to surpass Microsoft's Windows Mobile in sales during the first quarter of the ongoing year. The platform moved to the fourth position on the worldwide market, accounting for 9.6 percent of the smartphones sold in the time frame, while marking a great increase when compared to the 1.6 percent share it accounted for a year ago.
According to the research firm, smarpthone sales to end users toped 54.3 million units in the first quarter of the ongoing year, going up by 48.7 percent when compared to the first quarter of 2009. As for the global mobile phone market, sales reached 314.7 million units during the three months period, marking a 17 percent increase compared to the same period a year ago. The most successful vendors were those which had control over an integrated set of operating system (OS), hardware and services, Gartner notes.
“In the first quarter of 2010, smartphone sales to end users saw their strongest year-on-year increase since 2006,” Carolina Milanesi, research vice president at Gartner, commented on the report. “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 per cent year-on-year.”
Smartphones enjoyed double-digit growth in mature markets during the first three months of 2010, helping the global phone market move up. A wider availability and lower pricing proved important factors for the growth. “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.
Nokia's mobile phone sales to end users reached 110.1 million units in Q1, a 1.2 percent decline on a yearly basis, while Samsung sold 64.9 million devices, registering a growth of 26.3 percent year-on-year. LG ended the quarter on the third place, with 8.6 percent share and 27.2 million units sold. RIM managed to sell 10.6 million BlackBerry units in the time frame, going up 45.9 percent on year, while Sony Ericsson remained in top five, with 9.86 million units sold and a market share of 3.1 percent. More info can be found here.