Add to del.icio.us     Digg this

Aug. 13, 2009

According to fresh new numbers produced by Gartner, sales of new iPhones grew more than 500 percent year to year, and its market share increased by almost 376 percent.

"Apple's meteoric expansion into a larger number of countries in the past eleven months has produced a very positive effect on sales volumes, as have the recent price adjustments on the 8 Gb 3G S iPhone," according to Gartner's press release.

"Apple brought its much-anticipated new device to market at the end of the second quarter of last year, but its full potential will only start to show in the sales figures in the second half of this year."

Gartner made note of the declining market shares of Symbian and Windows Mobile, but it also expressed particular concern about the Palm Pre as well.

"Apple's new iPhone 3G S attracted a lot of media attention but also showed some mixed results at the cash register as sales only reached a little over 204,850 units," said Gartner principal analyst Roberta Cozza.

"Palm currently ranks 10th in the smartphone market and Gartner remains concerned about its ability to gain traction outside the U.S. market, where its brand isn't as strong," added Cozza.

For now, all eyes are focussed on the new iPhone and some analysts are now saying that the iPhone has the potential to become the defacto standard in modern smartphones.

Time will tell, but one thing is for sure: the iPhone has beat even the most optimistic sales targets that some had made less then a year ago.

At the high end of the smartphone market, HTC remained in the No. 4 position behind Apple, where it has been since the third quarter of last year. It reported lower expectations for the second half of this year due to product delays and now expects 2009 revenue to decline by low to mid-single digits year-on-year, far below its previous outlook of 10 per cent annual growth.

In the smartphone operating system market, Symbian held 51 per cent share, down from 57 per cent a year ago, while Research In Motion (RIM) and Apple grew their shares year-over-year. Google's Android share was just under 2 per cent of the market and more Android-based mobile devices will come to market in the fourth quarter of 2009, intensifying competition in the smartphone OS market, particularly for Symbian and Windows Mobile.

Overall, Microsoft's market share continued to drop year-on-year to account for less than 9.1 per cent of the market in the second quarter of this year.

"Microsoft licensees HTC and Samsung continued to add features to their own interfaces, on top of Windows Mobile, to create more competitive products and make up for the usability constraints of the Microsoft platform," said Cozza.

Add to del.icio.us     Digg this

    This article was featured on Business 5.0 and on Tech Blog.

Source: Gartner.