Smartphone Sales Slowed In Q4; Nokia, RIM Hold Lead
Overall for 2008, smartphone sales were up 13.9 percent over the year before, hitting 139.3 million devices sold.
While the market increased in the fourth quarter, Gartner noted that the sluggish economy and lack of device choice saw smartphone sales drop to the lowest recorded growth rate.
"After a strong third quarter with new product introductions, sequential growth slowed down again in the fourth quarter as fewer compelling new products and the worsened economic climate continued to make data plans associated with smartphones out of reach for most customers," Roberta Cozza, Gartner research director, said in a statement. "In general in 2008, the focus from vendors and operators on increasing their smartphone portfolios remained very strong. Samsung, RIM, HTC and Apple saw their volumes and share increase during 2008 thanks to their ability to offer compelling device experiences and touch interfaces."
According to Gartner, smartphones represented 12 percent of all mobile device sales in the fourth quarter of 2008, up from 11 percent in the year ago quarter.
The fourth quarter also marked the first time Samsung entered the top five smartphone vendors, edging out Sharp, likely due to the release of key devices such as the Samsung Instinct and Samsung Omnia, a pair of touch-screen devices that gained traction late last year. BlackBerry maker Research In Motion (RIM) Ltd. also recorded an increase in sales both sequentially and year over year, Gartner said, while Nokia's sales volume continued to fall.
Nokia's slump, however, wasn't enough to bump it from the top of the heap. In the fourth quarter, Nokia sold 15.6 million devices and held 40.8 percent of the market, down from the 50.9 percent of the market it held in the same quarter for 2007. RIM took second place, selling 7.4 million devices and grabbing 19.5 percent market share for the quarter, up from 10.9 percent one year ago.
Apple, HTC and Samsung also had a successful quarter for smartphone sales, with Apple smartphone sales growing 111.6 percent to give it 10.7 percent of the market.
HTC and Samsung each controlled a little more than 4 percent of the fourth quarter smartphone market, selling just over 1.5 million smartphones each, Gartner said.
According to Gartner, Nokia's sales decline also contributed to the weakness of the overall smartphone market. Like Nokia, Gartner said Apple iPhone sales also dropped significantly during the fourth quarter, and Apple also managed to hold ranking among the top five.
"Apple built an inventory of about two million iPhone units in the third quarter of 2008, which did not reduce significantly in the fourth quarter," Gartner noted. "With Apple's sequential decline, volumes were driven by new product introductions such as the RIM [BlackBerry] Storm, the T-Mobile G1 [the first product based on Google's Android platform] and strong performance from Samsung's touch-screen products."
For full-year sales, Nokia, RIM, Apple, HTC and Sharp made up the top five smartphone sellers.
And when it came to mobile operating systems, Symbian, RIM, Microsoft Windows Mobile, Mac OS X and Linux made up the top five for both the fourth quarter and the year.