Nokia No Longer One of the Top 5 Smartphone Vendors

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Market researchers from IDC and Strategy Analytics released separate reports that both show skyrocketing smartphone sales. In addition, both firms said that Samsung dominates the smartphone market, while Nokia’s struggles have caused it to drop off the list of leading vendors.

According to IDC’s press release, “The worldwide mobile phone market grew 2.4% year over year in the third quarter of 2012 (3Q12), driven by heavyweights Samsung and Apple as Nokia dropped off the Top 5 list of smartphone vendors. According to the International Data Corporation (IDC) Worldwide Quarterly Mobile Phone Tracker, vendors shipped a total of 444.5 million mobile phones in 3Q12 compared to 434.1 million units in the third quarter of 2011. In the worldwide smartphone market vendors shipped 179.7 million units in 3Q12 compared to 123.7 million units in 3Q11. The 45.3% year-over-year growth was slightly above IDC’s forecast of 45.2% for the quarter.”

PCMag’s Angela Moscaritolo reported, “Samsung was the undisputed star of the market, shipping a record 56.9 million smartphones worldwide during the third quarter — the largest number of units ever shipped by a smartphone vendor in a single quarter — to capture 35 percent global share, Strategy Analytics said. Apple came in second, shipping 26.9 million smartphones worldwide to nab 17 percent market share.”

In a press release, Neil Shah, senior analyst at Strategy Analytics, said, “The growth of Samsung and Apple has continued to impact Nokia. Nokia shipped 6.3 million smartphones worldwide for a 4 percent marketshare in Q3 2012, dipping from 16.8 million units and 14 percent share in Q3 2011.”

Computerworld’s John Ribeiro noted “Research In Motion, ZTE and HTC were the other three smartphone vendors in the top five, according to IDC. Chinese vendor ZTE eased HTC out of the fourth position largely because of its international diversification, and an increase in sales in many emerging markets. HTC’s smartphone shipments were down to 7.3 million units from 12.7 million units in the same quarter last year.”