IDC reveals smartphone shipments for 2009
IDC has revealed its latest stats on the smartphone market in 2009, estimating that handset firms shipped a total of 174.2 million ‘converged mobile devices’ during the year – up 15.1% year-on-year. Smartphones accounted for 15.4% of all mobile phone sales for 2009, according to the figures.
Q4 was particularly strong, with 54.5 million smartphones shipped – up 39% year-on-year. “To help address demand, carriers took advantage of lower prices on many older devices, ordering additional units and, in turn, offering reduced prices to end users,” says analyst Ramon Llamas. “It was the perfect set of conditions to push shipments to a record level.”
IDC predicts that 2010 will be a record year for smartphone sales – not a surprising forecast – fuelled by new versions of the Symbian and Windows Mobile operating systems joining the competition between iPhone, Android, BlackBerry and Palm’s webOS.
Nokia was the leading smartphone firm in 2009, shipping 67.7 million units for a 38.9% market share. It was followed by Research In Motion (34.5m units / 19.8% market share); Apple (25.1m / 14.4%); HTC (8.1m / 4.6%) and Samsung (5.7m / 3.3%) – with other vendors shipping 33.1 million smartphones for a 19% market share.
Full tables and stats can be found here.
