Gartner report shows smartphones’ growth
By Dean • Feb 24th, 2010 • Category: Industry News
- Photo: Gartner
Research company Gartner recently released statistics for 2009 that confirmed everybody’s suspicions: the smartphone market is growing at a rapid rate, and the iPhone even more so.
24% sales increase
- Photo: Apple
Worldwide estimates indicate the market has grown by 24%. Symbian, Nokia’s ubiquitous yet ailing mobile OS, has the biggest market share with 47%, followed by Research In Motion (Blackberry) at 20% and the hugely popular iPhone, which almost doubled its share, comes in at third with 14%. Windows Mobile, Linux and Android OS make up the rest of the market, with fringe mobile OS makers accounting for less than 1%.
This 24% gain represents an estimated 172 million handsets sold in total in 2009. This is a mere blip compared to the 1.2 billion phones sold in total, but it is worth noting that smartphones as a sub-market are growing, while total phone sales are flat. It is well within reason to assume that in the near future, manufacturers will only be developing what we consider as smartphones.
MWC points at the future
This Gartner report lines up well with what was shown at Mobile World Conference, both in terms of how much desire there is to get into this space and how much innovation is occurring inside it. The industry darling is clearly Apple with its iPhone platform, but with negative sentiment building on its practices, it does appear that other handset manufacturers and mobile operating systems may have an opening to exploit.
- Photo: Android
Android has emerged as the biggest competitor in recent times from a technical performance-based perspective, and their growth confirms this. Windows Mobile, now refreshed as Windows Phone Series 7, seems to be playing to win as well, while the dominant platform, Symbian, has been left to the open source community to decide and direct its future.
Tags for this article: smartphones
