In the third quarter, 169.2 million smartphones were sold worldwide. An increase of 46.9 percent compared with the same period a year earlier. The entire mobile phone market accounted for 428 million units, a decline of 3.1 percent.
The figures come from research firm Gartner and relate to the third quarter of 2012. They show that Samsung and Apple are on the rise, and that Nokia continues to see its market share decline.
For example, Nokia’s smartphone sales fell by 21.9 percent to 7.2 million units. As a result, the Finnish phone maker drops, compared with the third quarter of 2011, from third to seventh place in the smartphone rankings. Gartner does expect, however, that the new generation of Lumia devices may halt Nokia’s free fall.
iPhone and Galaxy
Apple and Samsung again proved to be the big winners in the third quarter. Together the manufacturers account for nearly half of total smartphone shipments. Apple saw iPhone sales rise by 36.2 percent. Samsung grew by 18.6 percent in the smartphone market.
As IDC figures already showed earlier this month, Android is still the largest operating system. Of all mobile phones, 72.4 percent run Google’s OS. Apple’s iOS had a 13.9 percent share in the third quarter, good for second place. BlackBerry saw its market share fall sharply from 11 to 5.3 percent. Microsoft, by contrast, is somewhat on the rise again. While in the third quarter of 2011 only 1.5 percent ran on Windows Phone, last quarter that was 2.4 percent.