Nokia continues to sell the most mobile handsets in the world, followed by Samsung, LG Electronics and Apple, according to a new IDC report. ZTE, a Chinese manufacturer that sells affordable handsets which are usually bundled with a service provider, is the fifth largest mobile handset brand in the world today.
Nokia, IDC said, is still getting a warm reception for its Symbian-powered smartphones despite being in a transformational phase. The company introduced the E6 and X7 recently. Both run on the new Symbian Anna software. In mobile phones, Nokia ramped up shipments of its C3 and X201 from last year and announced a Dual-SIM phone, the Nokia C2.
In the January-March quarter this year, Nokia sold 108.5 million handsets around the world. “What remains to be seen is how quickly Nokia will introduce new phones as competition intensifies. The company had 29.2 per cent market share (at the end of Q1 2011,) down from last year’s 34.7 per cent,” the IDC report added.
Samsung is at the number 2 spot with 70 million handsets sold in the quarter, which is a record for the Korean company. However, it lost market share and commands just 18.8 per cent now versus last year’s 20.7 per cent.
Although feature phones comprised the majority of Samsung’s shipments, smartphones represented a greater share from a year ago, nearly a fifth of its total volumes.
“Samsung appears well poised to reach its goal of shipping 50 million smartphones this year with new models, including the Galaxy S II 4G smartphones that are expected to hit the market later on,” the IDC report predicted.
LG Electronics is the only player among the top five to see a decline (which is 9.6 per cent) in its shipments this quarter. The company hopes to deliver better second quarter performance with the introduction of products such as LG Revolution, which will run on the LTE network of Verizon Wireless (USA), and Big, which has a 4.3 inch screen, 1GHz dual core processor and Android 2.2.
“The question for LG will be whether feature phone-declines in emerging and other markets can be offset by smartphone gains in future,” the report says.
Current market share of LG stood at 6.6 per cent versus last year’s 8.7 per cent.
Apple, with five per cent market share, has maintained its number four spot on IDC’s list. The company posted the highest year-on-year growth rate of the other four players with 114.9 per cent, while gaining more than 2 per cent of market share.
Apple’s results were buoyed by strong sales on Verizon Wireless and additional carrier deals; the company is now on 186 carriers operating in 90 countries. The iPhone once again sold particularly well in developed economic regions of the world such as North America and Western Europe.
ZTE held on to the No 5 slot in the rankings thanks to strong year-on-year growth in countries and regions where it does particularly well, such as China and Latin America. ZTE primarily sells low-cost feature phones but the company is making a concerted effort to ship more Android smartphones. It said it will try to create brand awareness and sell more devices in developed markets like the USA this year.