169 million smartphones were sold worldwide in the third quarter, of which 122 million were devices based on the Android platform, Gartner experts estimate.
After IDC, Canalys and Strategy Analytics, Gartner analysts presented their data on the smartphone market. However, unlike their colleagues, they did not count the number of devices delivered to the world market, but the number of devices sold to the end user.
In total, 428 million mobile phones were sold in the third quarter, which is 3% less than last year. Of these, 169 million are smartphones. Compared with the results of 2011, the number of smart phones sold in the third quarter of 2012 increased by 47%.
It is clear that the general decline is associated with the saturation of conventional handsets, which, against the background of cheaper smartphones, no longer look like an interesting purchase for the consumer. Even in China – the largest mobile device market in the world – smartphones are the main driver of sales.
Platform Market Android is the most popular platform in the third quarter with 122.5 million gadgets sold.
It accounted for 72% of the entire smartphone market. This is almost 50% more than was sold last year for the same period. Then smartphones with Android on board sold 60.5 million copies.
The market share of iOS–based smartphones decreased from 15% to 13.9%, despite an increase in sales – from 17.2 million last year to 23.5 this year. RIM’s share also dropped significantly, as expected. Now the Canadian platform has only 5.3% of the market, whereas a year ago it had 11%. Which, in principle, is not so bad, considering sales of almost 9 million gadgets. Bada has grown up very unexpectedly. The share of Samsung’s platform in the global market is exactly 3%, the number of devices sold in the third quarter is 5 million.
As for Microsoft, things are still going on with Windows Phone, albeit in a positive way, but very slowly. The number of smartphones sold on the American OS increased from 1.7 million to 4 million. Its market share is 2.4%, less than that of the outgoing Symbian with its 2.6% and 4.4 million devices sold. Last year, there were significantly more of them – 19.5 million.
Microsoft’s initial plan to take Symbian’s share of the smartphone market has failed. Android got this piece of the pie.
Looking to the future, Gartner expects big sales in the fourth quarter, but not as crazy as before, because now tablets are competing with smartphones for the title of “the best gift for Christmas”.