Apple tops smartphone seller chart
Sales to real punters, not shipments from factories, this time
Apple put more smartphones in the hands of punters than any other vendor during Q4 2011, and was the third most purchased brand in the mobile phone market as a whole.
The iPhone maker's chart position comes from market watcher Gartner. Unlike other handset business stats released by other research companies, Gartner's numbers focus on sales to end users, not shipments out of manufacturers' warehouses. So they give a better picture of phone ownership.
In Q4 2011, then, some 35,456,000 people received an iPhone - some 7.4 per cent of the quarter's total mobile phone purchases, and a healthy increase on the 3.5 per cent share Apple took in Q4 2010.
Nokia topped the chart, selling 111,699,400 phones - 23.4 per cent of the total - followed by Samsung, the vendor favoured by 92,682,300 buyers - 19.4 per cent. Both companies increased their share by a few percentage points.
For 2011 as a whole, we see the same top three: Nokia, Samsung and Apple, selling, respectively, 422,478,300, 313,904,200 and 89,263,200 handsets to real people.
LG and ZTE filled out the top five, followed by RIM, HTC, Huawei, Motorola and Sony Ericsson.
Gartner didn't provide comparable figures for smartphone suppliers, focusing instead on platforms. In Q4, Apple's iOS was second only to Android, with 35,456,000 units in punters' hands to the Google OS' 75,9061,100 units. Those figures give Android and iOS shares of 50.9 per cent and 23.8 per cent, respectively.
Given the numbers put in by HTC, Motorola and Sony Ericsson, it's clear that while Samsung accounted for a big chunk of those 75m Android sales, it didn't sell more than Apple did, making the Cupertino company the biggest selling individual smartphone seller.
Symbian put in a respectable share of 11.8 per cent, ahead of BlackBerry's 8.8 per cent and Bada's 2.1 per cent.
Microsoft's combined Windows Mobile and Windows Phone share amounted to just 1.9 per cent. So just over two-and-three-quarter million people bought an MS smartphone in Q4 2011, showing how few of Nokia's colossal quarterly sales to end users were Windows Phone devices. But it's still betting the farm on the platform. ®
COMMENTS
@Jim
Wow, you actually did report that post and had parts of it removed because I said you lapped up Marketing briefs like a Puppy licking a spilt ice-cream cone. Which I thought was quite a good metaphor...
Well done, in future I won't question your sanity or your absurdity as you are obviously a level headed and intelligent person and of course I have now realised that WP7 is, of course, the greatest platform known to man and domination of that sector is obviously assured, I just hadn't realised until my post was reported - the blinkers have been released.
Re: Re: @Jim
Well there was no personal attack, the 'snitch' comments were by different people adn as for
"Does this mean you are going to leave out the personal attacks now and get back to the subject matter?"
Well I will quote thineself
"Accusing someone of working for Microsoft breaks Forum Rule 7 - reported."
"Look if you can't play by El Reg's rules, don't cry like a baby when someone calls you out"
"Yeah I'm a snitch, I work for Microsoft and Nokia, and I talk to myself. Oh and I eat babies. Get over it."
What's the subject again?
Web apps
Point your user to an optimised for mobile web site and save yourself the trouble of having to maintain apps across platforms.
Options
Seems like you should be comparing all Android phones or all Android smart phones with all iOS devices. Who cares if you have an HTC or a Galaxy S, what matters is that you have an Android.
You wouldn't compare Xboxes sold to Dell desktops would you, you'd compare it to all PC sales or all Gaming speced PCs
LOL
What idiot would buy a half-baked Windows Phone, when you can get a fully featured budget Android handset for less?
An Orange Sanfrancisco for example can be picked up for £80.
Perhaps Nokia thinks it's entry level userbase are retards?
