Global mobile phone sales to end users totalled 314.7 million units in the first quarter of 2010, a 17% increase from the same period in 2009, while Smarpthone sales increased by 48.7% to 54.3 million units, according to new report from research firm Gartner.
Gartner said that the first quarter also saw some movement outside the top five mobile handset vendor rankings, G-Five made its debut into the top 10, grabbing 1.4% of market share in the first quarter of 2010.
Android and Apple were the only two OSs vendors among the top five to increase market share year-on-year, the report added.
Gartner report stated that smartphones accounted for 17.3% of all mobile handset sales in the first quarter of 2010, up from 13.6% in the same period in 2009.
According to Gartner, the rise of white-box manufacturers from Asia has also helped the others section, as a proportion of overall sales, increase its market share to 19.20% in the first quarter of 2010, up 2.7 percentage points.
This is having a profound effect on the top five mobile handset manufacturers’ combined share that dropped from 73.3 in the first quarter of 2009 to 70.7% in the first quarter of 2010.
Carolina Milanesi, research vice president at Gartner, said: Increasing sales of white-box products in some emerging regions, in particular India, also drove sales of mobile phones upward. We expect sales of white-box products to remain very healthy for the remainder of 2010, especially outside of China
Growth in the mobile devices market was driven by double-digit growth of smartphone sales in mature markets, helped by wider product availability as well as mass market price tags, the report said.
Gartner said that in the first quarter of 2010, Nokia’s mobile phone sales to end users reached 110.1 million units, a 1.2% decline in market share year-on-year. Samsung’s market share increase by 26.3% year-on-year. RIM’s mobile gained its market share by 45.9% year-on-year.
In the smartphone OS market, Sony Ericsson’s market share declined by 2.3 percentage points in the first quarter of 2010, while Apple’s market share increased by 112.2 % in 2010, which helped it move to top seven position.
Android moved to the top four position displacing Microsoft Windows Mobile, while Symbian remained in the top one position but continued to lose as Nokia remains weak in the high-end portfolio.
Milanesi said: In the first quarter of 2010, smartphone sales to end users saw their strongest year-on-year increase since 2006. This quarter saw RIM, a pure smartphone player, make its debut in the top five mobile devices manufacturers, and saw Apple increase its market share by 1.2% points. Android’s momentum continued into the first quarter of 2010, particularly in North America, where sales of Android-based phones increased 707% year-on-year.
Roberta Cozza, principal research analyst at Gartner, said: As seen with the iPad and web books based on Google’s Android platform, mobile OS ecosystems are developing and will move beyond smartphones to continue to deliver consumer value and a rich user experience.
