14 DAY TRIAL // Samsung is now the world’s leading mobile phone maker, the latest report coming from Gartner unveils. The analysis covers the first quarter of the year, when the South Korean vendor managed to take the top spot in phone sales from Nokia.
The overall mobile phone market went down two percent in the time frame, the research firm notes. Only 419.1 million units were sold in the three-month period, this being the first time since Q2 2009 that the market experiences decline.
However, some companies registered growth, and Samsung was one of them. The vendor sold mobile phones in excess of 86.6 million units, marking an increase of 25.9 percent from the same period a year ago.
The maker also climbed to the first position on the smartphone market, with 38 million smartphones sold worldwide, while accounting for over 40 percent of all Android-based smartphone sales.
Smartphones are still driving growth on the mobile phone market, Gartner notes, adding that 144.4 million units have been sold in the first quarter of the year, an increase of 44.7 percent on a yearly basis.
Apple and Samsung also increased their combined market share in the smartphone segment to 49.3 percent, up from 29.3 percent a year ago, leaving Nokia far behind with only 9.2 percent market share.
Nokia sold 83.2 million mobile phones in the first quarter of this year, registering a 22.7 percent decrease from the first quarter of 2011.
“Smartphone sales are becoming of paramount importance at a worldwide level. For example, smartphone volumes contributed to approximately 43.9 per cent of overall sales for Samsung as opposed to 16 per cent for Nokia,” Anshul Gupta, principal research analyst at Gartner said.
Google’s Android operating system is leading the smartphone OS market with 56.1 percent market share, up from 36.4 percent a year ago. Apple’s iOS came in on the second position, with 22.9 percent market share.
According to Gartner, “the smartphone market has become highly commoditized,” making it difficult for mobile phone makers to differentiate.
“This is particularly true for smartphones based on the Android OS, where a strong commoditization trend is at work and most players are finding it hard to break the mould,” Mr. Gupta said.
“At the high end, hardware features coupled with applications and services are helping differentiation, but this is restricted to major players with intellectual property assets. However, in the mid to low-end segment, price is increasingly becoming the sole differentiator.”
