Smartphone Market grows 61% in 2011 [Market Share Stats]

IDC recently released stats on Worldwide Smartphone market and its growth has beaten analysts expectations as well. According to the the IDC’s Worldwide Mobile Phone Tracker, Smartphone manufacturers shipped 157.8 million units in 4Q11 compared to 102.0 million units in the fourth quarter of 2010. The YoY growth of 54.7% was higher than the 49.2% growth registered in 3Q11.

Top Five Worldwide Smartphone Vendors Market in 2011

Vendor	FY 2011 Shipment Volumes	FY 2011 Market Share	FY 2010 Shipment Volumes	FY 2010 Market Share	Year Over Year Change
Samsung	94.0	19.1%	22.9	7.5%	310.5%
Apple	93.2	19.0%	47.5	15.6%	96.2%
Nokia	77.3	15.7%	100.1	32.9%	-22.8%
Research In Motion	51.1	10.4%	48.8	16.0%	4.7%
HTC	43.5	8.9%	21.7	7.1%	100.5%
Others	132.3	26.9%	63.7	20.9%	107.7%
Total	491.4	100.0%	304.7	100.0%	61.3%

The total smartphone shipment volumes reached 491.4 million units in 2011, a whopping increase over 304.7 million units in 2010. However, in percentage basis, the growth was lower in 2011 (61.3%) as compared to 2010 (75.7%). IDC report also states that by December 2011, one out of every three mobiles phones shipped worldwide was a smartphone.

Top Five Worldwide Smartphone Vendors Market Share Changes

Apple:

Apple regained its market leader position by launching iPhone 4S worldwide. It also reached a new shipment volume record for itself and for the entire industry for a single quarter. The holiday season, delay in the product launch from 3Q to 4Q and the addition of multiple mobile operators has helped Apple achieve this record. The much hyped 4S has left few Apple fanboy’s disappointed as it lacked 4G LTE connectivity or a different size screen.

Samsung:

Samsung too had its share of milestones. It broke the 30 million units mark for the first time and also posted the largest year-over-year increase of the top lot (yeah true!! Who bothered about Samsung phones couple of years back ;)). Samsung also has concentrated on expanding in all kinds of market with Galaxy S2, Galaxy Nexus in the high end sector, Galaxy Ace and galaxy Y in the mass market. The biggest achievement for Samsung though was that it managed to marginally beat Apple in terms of number of units shipped!

Nokia

This is something which Nokia wouldn’t be proud of – Nokia posted the largest year-over-year decrease amongst the top manufacturers. But, Nokia has been in news again for good reasons due to the release of first set of windows smartphones – Lumia 710 and the Lumia 800. Nokia claims that it shipped over a million units’ in its debut quarter. However, the Symbian phones are losing their charm and Nokia could stop shipping these Symbian’s soon.

Blackberry

2011 has been a mixed bag of results for RIM (Blackberry). Firstly, the good things – The new BB OS 7-powered BlackBerry phones reached new markets. And then the not so good things – the global network outage in October (I almost died laughing at few of the jokes on BB!). Also the news that the first BB 10-powered smartphones will arrive only by the end of year 2012 has left the BB fans disappointed.

HTC

HTC has timed its releases quite well and it has been releasing the smartphones from time to time. It not only relied on Android smartphones but also released Windows Phone’s like Titan and Radar models. This strategy of HTC catered to both the mobile operators as well as the customers quite a well. However, when compared to the last quarter, HTC has shipped less number of phones.