Smartphone sales up by 85 per cent on 2010

Smartphones accounted for 23.6 per cent of overall mobile sales in the first quarter of 2011, an increase of 85 per cent year on year, according to Gartner.

This is against a wider mobile market that saw an increase in sales of 19 per cent to 427.8 million over the same period.

The research firm predicts that smartphones will continue to outpace the rest of the market, with mid-tier smartphones heading for mass adoption over the coming year.

Roberta Cozza, principal research analyst at Gartner, argued that smartphone sales could have been higher but for the fact that some consumers delayed their purchases to wait for more affordable mid-tier models.

"Manufacturers announced a number of high-profile devices during the first quarter of 2011 that would not ship until the second quarter of 2011 – consumers will have waited for these models,” she said.

Nokia is still the top handset seller globally, with 107.6 million mobile devices shipped in the first quarter. However, its market share saw a 5.5 per cent year-on-year fall compared with the first quarter of 2010. Nokia's market share is at its lowest since 1997.

Gartner expects Nokia will aggressively lower prices in markets where communications service providers control the sales channels to maintain shipments of Symbian devices while the market waits for its first Windows Phone 7 devices to ship.