Android soars as mobile sales given smartphone boost

RIM grew its share but could be facing a potential backlash in the coming months

Demand for mobile phones shows no signs of abating as figures from Gartner showed that worldwide device sales in the second quarter of 2010 totalled 325.6 million units.

This represents a 13.8 per cent increase on the same quarter last year, according to Gartner's Competitive Landscape: Mobile Devices, Worldwide, 2Q10 report.

Smartphone sales helped to drive this growth, accounting for 19 per cent of overall sales, an increase of 50.5 per cent year-on-year.

On the operating system side, Android saw huge growth as it rose from a market share of 1.8 per cent in the second quarter of 2009 to 17.2 per cent, leap-frogging Apple into third place.

Nokia's Symbian platform remained the most popular OS, but suffered massively from Android's growth, falling from a 51 per cent market share to 41.2 over the 12-month period. Windows Mobile also lost 4.2 per cent to end on five per cent.

However, fortunes varied for the major manufacturers, with Nokia losing a full 2.6 per cent of its market share despite selling 111 million units, while LG also suffered, dropping from 10.7 per cent market share in 2009 to nine per cent in 2010.

Meanwhile, HTC entered the top 10 for the first time, taking the number eight spot thanks to a whopping 139.1 per cent increase in its market share. Apple rose from1.9 per cent to 2.7 per cent, while RIM saw an increase of 0.7 per cent to 3.4 per cent, after selling 11.5 million units.

However, Gartner analyst Nick Jones said he thought RIM could face difficulties in the coming months, given its current problems abiding by certain countries' laws.

"RIM is not in a wonderful situation. It’s expanding its shipments but the market is expanding faster," he said.

"It needs to look overseas for growth, but in these markets when there are question marks over security and those questions are unanswered then that’s bad for RIM, unless it changes things."

Gartner added that a shortage of key components, such as active matrix organic LED (AMOLED) displays, held back sales on some of the more popular new smartphones.

Market share Q2 2009 and Q2 2010

1. Nokia 36.8 [2009] 34.2 [2010]
2. Samsung 19.3 20.1
3. LG 10.7 9.0
4. RIM 2.7 3.4
5. Sony Ericsson 4.7 3.4
6. Motorola 5.6 2.8
7. Apple 1.9 2.7
8. HTC 0.9 1.8
9. ZTE 1.3 1.7
10. G'Five N/A 1.6
Others 16.1 19.3