Smartphone sales up 50%
Android set to whack BlackBerry
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Smartphone sales rose by half over the last three months, according to market analysts Gartner, with the segment now making up almost 20 per cent of phones sold.
Of the 326 million handsets that Gartner reckons were sold in the last three months, 19 per cent fall into the smartphone category, with Symbian's share of that category now down to 41 per cent and Android taking up the slack.
The total number of phones shipped around the world rose by 19 per cent, but that's expected given the usual lull in sales around the start of any year as a significant proportion of the world recovers from Christmas. Nokia's share of that total fell to 34.2 per cent, from almost 37 per cent, which bodes badly, though it's not just Nokia feeling the pain.
While Symbian's momentum keeps it in the lead, the competition is slowly catching up. After Symbian comes BlackBerry at just over 18 per cent, closely followed by Android at a smidgen above 17 per cent. Apple drags behind at 14.2 per cent, despite getting all the media attention.
Gartner reckons Apple will do alright - the iPhone 4 is still to arrive in some markets and is selling despite being dogged by technical issues. Gartner also paints a rosy future for Android, suggesting that it will overtake BlackBerry by the end of 2010. ®
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COMMENTS
You can't have it both ways...
When the iPhone was doing great you were probably happy as half the net filled up with previews, reviews, leaks and general gush about how wonderful each new iteration was. The column inches given over to publish ever more masturbatory shite were hardly justified or in proportion.
Why cry now the same degree of coverage is being given to a flaw? A flaw that Apple claimed didn't exist until the rest of world proved it...errr...did.
On-topic; I'm using the HTC Wildfire I got on the strength of the Reg's review. It's a great little phone; basically a baby Desire. I turned the HTC Sense UI off because I don't need six home screens or countless widgets. The three screens on the vanilla Android UI work just fine and the overall performance is a lot snappier for it.
I'm happy with Android. It feels like it's 1995 again and I'm a part of something new; something pioneering and audacious. Back then being 'on the internet' meant that people pointed at you in the street and talked about you in hushed whispers. The sound of a dial-up modem doing it's thing was likened to the approach of the Four Horsemen.
This is the stage I feel Android is at now. It's gaining traction, visibility and a momentum all of its' own. It's fun to use, has a common base and works well on a broad range of hardware. The people developing for it aren't people in lab coats locked away in California; they're ordinary folks who write apps or widgets out of that weird human philanthropy which can't quite be explained but was responsible for the rise of the internet.
In short; you can stand in the corner wiping your eyes and rubbing your sore arse all you like. Android is a phone OS for phones real people want to use. Butthurt hipsters who spent too much on a broken personality substitute need not apply.
Have a great weekend!
@AC
The Trevor Pott definition of a smartphone, which holds no weight whatsoever, is that a smartphone is a device you can both install applications upon and make phone calls from. (I leave open the question of whether or not PCs/Laptops equipped with Skype count.) Many “dumb phones” still have advanced features: cameras, browsers, etc. These phones can’t be changed beyond the manufacturer’s software loadout however, making them even more locked down than a non-jailbroken iPhone.
To contrast, a smartphone is essentially a palm pilot with a cellular radio and an application for making phone calls. There are nigglies about “but they’re more advanced than that” I am sure, but the basic principle remains the same. Smartphones are PDAs/application executing devices first and phones second. Dumb phones are phones first and they maybe do other things when needed.
I suspect that 10 minutes with any device will give you a good understanding of which side of that gap the device in question was designed for.
Ahhh HAH
I knew having a phone which can't place calls and being concerned was just me over reacting as well... silly me.
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