Worldwide converged mobile device market continued to grow despite economic recession and reached record shipments during a single quarter, according to market research firm IDC.
According to IDCs worldwide quarterly mobile phone tracker, vendors shipped 43.3m units in the third quarter of 2009, an increase of 4.2% compared to 41.5m units same period last year, and an increase of 3.2% from shipments of 41.9m units in second quarter of 2009.
According to the report, top five mobile device vendors were Nokia, Research In Motion, Apple, HTC and Samsung. Nokia reported a shipments of 16.4m for the third quarter of 2009, an increase of 6.6% compared to 15.4m for the same period last year. Nokia’s shipments were driven by its N97 and E71. Research In Motion shipments increased by 35.7% to 8.2m from 6m for third quarter of 2008, helped by the demand for BlackBerry devices.
Apple shipments increased by 7.1% to 7.4m for the third quarter of 2009. With the global availability of iPhone 3G S, Apple loyalists replaced their older iPhones while the lower price on the iPhone 3G put the device well within reach of customers wary of the price.
HTC reported total shipments of 2.4m for the third quarter of 2009, an increase of 14.7% compared to 2.1m for the same period last year. It has launched new devices shipping new Windows 6.5 operating system, which include the HD2, Imagio, Tilt2, Pure, and Touch2. Samsung’s total shipments remained flat for the quarter. The company saw marked improvement in Asia/Pacific, Latin America, and EMEA.
William Stofega, research manager with IDC’s Mobile Devices Technology and Trends team, said: The release of new Android devices has picked up dramatically over the past several months and the release of version 2.0 demonstrates that Android is rapidly evolving and responsive to suggestions from OEMs and developers. With an expanding portfolio of handsets and a just released update of the code, Android is poised to mount a serious challenge to the incumbent smartphone OEMs for the first time in its brief history.
