Smartphone Trends 2Q ‘09: iPhone still leads the Pack

Wednesday, August 12, 2009

Amidst the worldwide recession, smart phones seem to be one of the few industries that are still growing. Apple’s own iPhone seem to be doing even better than its competitors. Research firm Garter recently released a report on worldwide mobile phone and smartphone sales. While total mobile phone sales declined 6 percent, smart phone sales grew 27 percent in the second quarter of 2009 when compared to the same quarter in 2008.

This recession hurt some of the top dogs in the cell phone business, specifically Nokia, Sony Ericsson, and Motorola. But what even caused them more harm is their failure to gain traction in the smart phone arena. On the other hand, traditional cell phone makers, Samsung and LG posted strong sales with their touchscreen and qwerty phones and smartphones releases.

Worldwide Smartphone Sales to End Users in 2Q09 (Thousands of Units)

Company	2Q09 Sales	2Q09 Market Share (%)	2Q08 Sales	2Q08 Market Share (%)
Company	2Q09 Sales	2Q09 Market Share (%)	2Q08 Sales	2Q08 Market Share (%)
Nokia	18,441.0	45.0	15,297.9	47.4
Research In Motion	7,678.9	18.7	5,594.2	17.3
Apple	5,434.7	13.3	892.5	2.8
HTC	2,471.0	6.0	1,330.8	4.1
Fujitsu	1,249.0	3.0	1,071.5	3.3
Others	5,688.2	13.9	8,085.8	25.1
Total	40,962.8	100.0	32,272.7	100.0

The chart above is included in the Gartner report. It indicates that total smart phone sales grew by 8 million units. Even Nokia’s sales went up despite a 2.4% loss in market share. Apple’s sales went up 37% from last year. HTC has even a higher growth rate of 85% from last year, signaling the rise of Android based smart phones in the near future.

Admob, the company that bring ads to mobile devices, gave their own take on worldwide smartphone market share for June 2009. Admob records the number of requests for their ads, then categorizes them based on the device manufacturers. From the pie chart on the top of the page, it seems that Apple brought 47% of all smartphone web traffic based on Admob’s report. Nokia didn’t do too bad with a 33% of smart phone admob request coming from the big N. Clearly, iPhone is still the smart phone of choice when browsing the web and using internet enabled apps.

Admob also reported interesting geographical smart phones data. They estimate that 58% of iPhone and iPod touch were used in North America while Western Europe and Asia has a share of 26% and 7% respectively.

With the successful iPhone 3GS launch in July, it would be interesting to take another look at the smart phone trends and market when the data are released. It also makes you wonder what will be the market share for the iPhone if other carriers in the U.S. are allowed to sell the iPhone.