Mobile handset sales slip, smartphones still climbing

Stephen Withers
Wednesday, 24 February 2010 09:07

IT Industry - Market

Despite an almost 1% drop in the total number of mobile phones sold in 2009, smartphone sales were up by almost a quarter.

Figures published by industry analyst Gartner show the number of mobile phones sold in 2009 was 1,211,236,600, compared with 1,222,252,900 in 2008.

One good sign for the manufacturers and the rest of the chain was that fourth-quarter sales were up 8.3% year on year, presumably reflecting growing confidence in many countries that the worst of the global financial crisis was over.

(A number of companies in the IT sector reported improved conditions in the fourth quarter.)

The pain in the handset industry was not evenly spread. Among the top five companies, Motorola and Sony Ericsson saw substantial drops in share and absolute volume: Motorola went from approximately 107 million units to 58 million, and Sony Ericsson from 93 million to 54 million.

Nokia is still the market leader with 36.4% by volume, but it lost over two percentage points of share as sales shrank by nearly 32 million units.

If those three companies lost out, who gained? Find out on page 2.