Nielsen has just published a handy chart tracking OS share among smartphone owners with a contract in the US, for example. The data above applies to new shipments of smartphones, but there are other companies looking into how many devices each OS has out in the wild. ABI Research thinks Android took a 46.4% share of smartphone shipments in Q2 with 47m units, ahead of iOS (20.4m), Symbian (16.7m) and BlackBerry (13.2m). Analyst ABI Research has provided predictions for both, pegging Samsung's Q2 smartphone shipments at around 19m, and sticking with RIM's figure of 13.2m.ĭivvying smartphone shipments up by manufacturer is one thing, but what app developers are more interested in is the operating system split. In RIM's case, the difficulty is that its financial year doesn't follow the calendar year, so in its fiscal quarter ending on 28 May, it shipped 13.2m BlackBerry smartphones. In the former case, it's because Samsung declined to give exact figures for its smartphone sales in Q2, citing competitive fears. Samsung and Research In Motion are a bit more awkward. HTC has just announced that it sold 12.1m smartphones in Q2, while other companies revealing their smartphone figures include LG (5.4m), Sony Ericsson (5.3m), Motorola (4.1m). Starting with the latter, Apple sold 20.4m iPhones in Q2, overhauling Nokia, which sold 16.7m "smart devices" – the term it uses for smartphones. There is no shortage of estimates for that sector of the market in the second quarter of this year, and some hard data too. That's for all phones, but many app developers are focusing purely on smartphones. That raises the spectre of second-placed Samsung (70.2m units / 19.2% market share) overtaking it in the near future. The company's tale of the top five mobile phone vendors shows Nokia still in first place, having shipped 88.5m units, but with its market share having fallen from 33.8% in Q2 2010 to 24.2% in Q2 2011. However, the transition point is not just happening in big Western markets: IDC notes strong sales of low-cost Android smartphones in Latin America, and also in south east Asia. IDC describes this as a "transition point", and is backed up by US market research firm Nielsen, which claims that in its home market, more smartphones were sold between March and May 2011 than feature phones. The overall growth is thus being driven by surging sales of smartphones. IDC says that sales of feature phones actually fell 4% year-on-year in the latest quarter: the first time it has done so since the third quarter of 2009. That's up 11.3% year-on-year from the 328.4m phones that IDC thinks shipped in Q2 2010, although below the 13.3% growth that the analyst had expected. The company says that 365.4m units were shipped in the second quarter of 2011, a figure that includes feature phones and smartphones. IDC's estimates for global shipments of mobile phones is a good place to start. Individually they're of varying interest and credibility, but there is some value for app developers in pulling the data together and poring over the likely implications. July has been a particularly big month, with a number of studies, surveys and predictions. Four times a year there is a spike in market share estimates just after quarterly financial results are released, while the time in between is filled with analyst forecasts and surveys from market research firms trying to get to the bottom of changing market trends. The mobile phone market is deluged with data.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
Details
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |