So did worldwide mobile phone sales increase in 2009, or was the year a bit flat?

Latest figures from US research house Gartner show that the total number of phones sold worldwide in 2009 was 1.211 billion units, a 0.9% drop from 2008. Most of which one day will end up with the mobile phone recyclers.

On a slightly better note, sales in the fourth quarter of 2009 were actually up 8.3% (340 million units) over the fourth quarter of 2008, so the trend is getting better.

Carolina Milanesi, research director at Gartner, said:
“The mobile devices market finished on a very positive note, driven by growth in smartphones and low-end devices. Smartphone sales to end users continued their strong growth in the fourth quarter of 2009, totalling 53.8 million units, up 41.1% from the same period in 2008. In 2009, smartphone sales reached 172.4 million units, a 23.8 per cent increase from 2008. In 2009, smartphone-focused vendors like Apple and Research In Motion (RIM) successfully captured market share from other larger device producers, controlling 14.4% and 19.9% of the worldwide smartphone market, respectively.”

Gartner also highlighted the intense competition felt by manufacturers in 2009, not only in growing markets such as China and India, but also in the mature markets. But, Gartner reckons that the stronger economic climate will mean better times throughout 2010.

As to the manufacturers themselves, the big five of Nokia, Samsung, LG, Motorola and Sony Ericsson had mixed fortunes. As a group, they lost market share to the likes of Apple and other manufacturers, with their combined share dropping from 79.7% in 2008 to 75.3% in 2009.

Nokia’s share of the market dropped from 38.6% to 36.4% as pressure on smartphone price points took their toll. Samsung did actually better in 2009, going from 16.3% to 19.5%. LG also showed a market share improvement, up from 8.4% to 10.1%. But Motorola took a hit, falling from 8.7% to 4.8% and Sony Ericsson also showed a decline from 7.6% to 4.5%.

Tags: LG, Motorola, Nokia, Samsung, Sony Ericsson

This entry was posted on Tuesday, February 23rd, 2010 at 1:22 pm by admin and is filed under Mobile phone business, News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.