The Palm Pre. The BlackBerry Storm. Windows Mobile. Miss Cleo. These are all things that are powerless to stop the ever growing success and ubiquity of the iPhone. According to the most recent report from Gartner, which covered the third quarter of 2009, the iPhone accounted for 17% of all smartphone sales worldwide. Last year during the same quarter, the iPhone’s share of smartphone sales came in at 12.9%.
With respect to actual sales figures, worldwide iPhone sales during the most recent quarter checked in at 7.04 million while worldwide sales during the same quarter a year-ago came in at 4.72 million. In other words, iPhone sales worldwide increased by a whopping 50% in the past year.
While iPhone growth is certainly accelerating, Apple’s 17.1% marketshare is still nowhere near Nokia whose assortment of smartphones still occupy an impressive 39.3% of worldwide sales. But as the chart below shows, Nokia’s marketshare is on the decline as companies like Apple and Research in Motion continue to chop away at Nokia’s top position.
November 14th, 2009 at 4:36 pm
One of the more interesting observations that I have not seen mentioned concerns the actual growth numbers. The total growth in the marketplace was approximately 4.5 million units. RIM grew 2.7 million units during the same period. Apple grew 2.3 million units. The conclusion is that the remaining smartphone manufacturers effectively shrank during this period.