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Dec. 5, 2008

Overall, the global SmartPhone market in the third quarter increased by only 11.4 percent when compared to sales for the same period in 2007.

This is the smallest market growth rate since Gartner began counting it four years ago, analysts said today.

Put in real numbers, end-user sales of smartphones totaled 36.5 million units in the third quarter.

Gartner analyst Roberta Cozza says “we should expect the smartphone market to continue to grow but at a slower pace. Although leading wireless operators are subsidizing more and more smartphones, to reach lower prices they tie the device to two-year contracts with monthly data plan rates, which remain still too expensive for the mainstream user.”

In true market share, Nokia remains first with a very comfortable 42.4 percent share of the pie, but with its first-ever decline of 3 percent year-over-year, partially because of its delay in launching touchscreen devices, Cozza said.

Research In Motion’s BlackBerry sales surged by 81.7 percent in the quarter, resulting in a 15.9 percent market share. Apple regained the third spot with a 12.9 percent share of the market. Apple also made a jump with its operating system, beating Microsoft’s Windows Mobile sales for the first time.

All other smartphone vendors are in the single digits. HTC had a 4.5 percent and Sharp had a 3.4 percent share.

Also in the news today, Strategy Analytics predicts that mobile Web browsing will become a $38 billion market in the year 2013, with more than 750 million global users.

Strategy Analytics vice president David Kerr says "although we have entered into a global and serious economic downturn, Strategy Analytics continues to forecast increased spending on mobile Internet access products over the next few years."

He added "during this period, we anticipate strong price competition on data access from operators, as well as greater consumer adoption of flexible casual browsing options that meet the needs of a broader base of cellular users, such as low-priced, daily capped rates.”

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Source: Strategy Analytics.