Stamford, Connecticut based researcher Gartner Inc. said in their Q4 report today that Apple has become the third largest seller of mobile phones overall and has snatched the number one spot from Samsung in the smartphone market based on the billowing sales of its iPhone in the fourth quarter.
Almost a quarter of the world’s smartphone sales consisted of Apple’s iPhone, increasing its market share from 15.8 percent of last year to 23.8 percent. A total sale of 35.5 million units of smartphones accounted for this increase where as Samsung could only manage a sale of 34 million phones.
Unsurprisingly, more than half of the smartphones sold world wide ran on Google’s star operating system Android. Although there was a slight decline in its market share due to soaring sales of iPhone 4S in mature markets worldwide. Bearing heavy losses Nokia tried to improve its market share by promptly bringing out its Lumia 710 and 800 but as anticipated the window’s enabled phones could neither benefit Nokia’s market share nor Microsoft’s, where it’s market share dropped from 3.4 percent to 1.9 percent in fourth quarter of 2011.
Munching on the success of it’s smartphone Apple made it to the third largest handset vendor overall pushing LG to the fifth place just behind ZTE Corp. Where as Nokia maintained its market leading position with a total share of 23.4 percent with Samsung gaining on its back with only a difference of 4 percent. Surprisingly enough ZTE and Huawei made substantial progress in the fourth quarter cutting into the market share of LG, Sonny Ericsson, Motorola and Research In Motion(RIM) and reported the most rapid growth following Apple in the fourth quarter because of their Android enabled smartphones with improved user experience and low priced quality products.
Analysts believe that China is the next frontier in the smartphone market. Roberta Cozza , a U.K based Gartner Analyst, said “The wild card for 2012 is China”. She further added “If Apple closes a deal with China Telecom or China Mobile they could see their units double in that market”.
