November 7th, 2008
Apple moves into 2nd place in worldwide smartphone sales
It is pretty amazing watching the growth of the Apple iPhone in the worldwide smartphone market and the latest Canalys Q3 2008 report shows that Apple is now number 2. Nokia continues to lead with a large percentage, but others are catching up fast. There is also some encouraging news for U.S. smart phone fans, like myself, as the numbers show the smartphone market in the U.S. has doubled since last year.
Global smartphone sales hit almost 40 million units in Q3 with growth in the U.S. and EMEA with a decline in the Asia Pacific region. Microsoft’s share also increased as more and more Windows Mobile devices hit the market.
Nokia is the current leader at 38.9% (they had 52.9% in 4th quarter of 2007), Apple is now 2nd at 17.3% (they had 6.5% in Q4 2007), RIM is in a close 3rd at 15.2%, Motorola and HTC each have 5.8%, and others fall into the last 17%. I am not sure if Palm falls in this 17% because a few of their devices is made by HTC and it appears that this list shows the branded products like the HTC Touch Diamond. Next quarter the T-Mobile G1 should appear somewhere and may be a part of the HTC numbers. The G1 should show up in the OS Vendor numbers under the Linux category.
The BlackBerry Bold and Storm should be coming in the 4th quarter, along with the Nokia 5800 touch UI device so with no new iPhones coming it will be interesting to see the impact of these new devices.
Matthew Miller is an avid mobile device enthusiast who works during the day as a professional naval architect in Seattle. See his full profile and disclosure of his industry affiliations.
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