The smartphone market’s growth is impressive too when contrasted to the 38% growth in the fourth quarter, which is typically the strongest of the year. This demonstrates the tremendous potential of the market and the depths to which it plunged in the first quarter of last year.
“2010 looks to be another year of large-scale consumer adoption of converged mobile devices,” says Ramon Llamas, senior research analyst with IDC’s Mobile Devices Technology and Trends team, in the press release. “Consumers will gravitate to smartphones not just because the devices themselves look ‘cool’ and ‘slick’, but because the overall experience aligns with their individual tastes and demands. Users are seeking – and finding – experiences that are intuitive, seamless, and fun. Already, we’ve seen what Palm’s webOS and Google’s Android can do. This year, we expect updates for BlackBerry, Symbian, and Windows Mobile to spark greater smartphone demand with their offerings.”
Market Outlook for 2010
Kevin Restivo, senior analyst with IDC’s Worldwide Mobile Phone Tracker, said higher smartphone sales this year will be a result of greater awareness, increasingly affordable data plans, and the global economic recovery. “More consumers are aware of smartphones now due to positive referrals from friends and family and manufacturer’s mass media campaigns,” said Restivo in the press release. “Coupled with increased confidence on the part of consumers, these factors will create a perfect storm of demand for suppliers this year.”
Top Five Smartphone Vendors Q1 2010
Nokia maintained its position as the leading smartphone vendor worldwide during 1Q10. In addition to introducing several new models – the C3, C6, and the E5 – Nokia announced its first Symbian^3 model, the N8. This, and other Symbian^3 devices, are expected to launch in the fourth quarter of this year.
Research In Motion kept its position as the number two smartphone vendor worldwide on continued growth of its popular BlackBerry devices. Key to its success were its BlackBerry Curve 8520 and BlackBerry Bold 9700, as well as stronger consumer adoption. Co-CEOs Mike Lazaridis and Jim Balsillie recently unveiled the company’s new BlackBerry OS 6.0, which promises a smoother and more interactive user interface.
Apple more than doubled its shipments from a year ago, with more iPhones arriving outside its home territory of North America. CEO Steve Jobs announced the latest operating system update, enabling multi-tasking, folders, enhanced email, iBooks for consumers, and iAd, a mobile advertising platform, for developers. A fourth generation iPhone is expected to arrive this summer.
HTC saw growth to start off the year, driven primarily by its growing stable of Android-powered products including the Hero, Droid Eris, and MyTouch. The company has announced several new devices, including the first WiMAX Android phone, the EVO 4G, slated to launch later this year. HTC also remains committed to Windows Mobile devices, with the HD2 and Windows Phone 7 devices expected to launch before the end of the year.
Motorola, built on its short history of shipping Android devices. Now that the DROID and CLIQ (known as the Milestone and DEXT respectively outside the United States) both have a full quarter of availability, the company followed up with six additional devices. The company expects to launch 20 different models and ship 12–14 million Android smartphones this year.
Top Five Converged Mobile Device Vendors, Shipments, and Market Share, Q1 2010 (Units in Millions)
Source: IDC Worldwide Quarterly Mobile Phone Tracker, May 6, 2010
Note: Vendor shipments are branded shipments and exclude OEM sales for all vendors.
Converged Mobile Devices – These mobile devices are either voice or data centric and are capable of synchronizing personal information and/or email with server, desktop, or laptop computers. These devices must match wireless telephony capability to high level operating systems, include the ability to download data to local storage, run applications, and store user data beyond PIM capabilities. Converged mobile devices must offer the full extent of their application processing capability to the user, regardless of network availability.
Source: IDC
Hehe, bloodbath
Anyone else notice the staggering static market shares of #1 & 2, vs. The 60% growth in market share for #3? This is going to make for some good case studies for B-school students.
Scubaboy,
Looking at MDN’s headline, I’d say the answer to your question is “Yes.”
RIMM’s 10.6 million, is that including the 2nd free Blackberry in their 2 for 1 deals? So, was it 5.3 million purchased? If so, then Apple sold more than RIMM sold!
Well that’s one way to dodge the Android news released this week.
just my $0.02
I like how all the reviews for the other “smartphones” use phrases like: “promise that….”
It’s like they’re apologizing for their crappy phones.
What Android news? Are Google finally going to take control of the rampant differentiation? You know, common screen size, type and pixel density. Same OS version. Same CPU chip brands and same speed. Same input UI.
Are they going to fix the developer mess?
Oh, I get the Android news. Some geek got an Android OS to work on a jailbroken iPhone.
I read the original Frankenstein. It was way more interesting.
@ Scubaboy
Is it true that deep sea divers with chickenpox don’t come up to scratch!
I hate this “converged mobile device” term. Nokia is using it all the time and refuse to use the real word Smartphones because they don’t want to give the competition any recognition.
“converged mobile device” Sounds incredibly stupid.