Apple and Samsung are the largest smartphone manufacturers in the world and together they generate 46.5% of the sales of the entire industry. The information comes from a study by Gartner, and according to them, Android would have a market share of 72.4% globally, and here we take into account all types of mobile phones sold globally. The increase recorded by Android OS compared to the same period last year is 20%, while the rest of the operating systems only recorded decreases. To be honest, I think that Android has grown quite a bit compared to last year, but I find it extremely difficult to believe that iOS has decreased, considering that Apple sold much more than in the same period of last year.
Samsung's mobile phone sales continued to accelerate, totaling almost 98 million units in the third quarter of 2012 (see Table 1), up 18.6 percent year-on-year. Samsung saw strong demand for Galaxy smartphones across different price points, and it further widened the gap with Apple in the smartphone market, selling 55 million smartphones in the third quarter of 2012. It commanded 32.5 percent of the global smartphone market in the third quarter of 2012.
The problem with studies of this kind is that Samsung refuses to say how much is coming and everything is based only on estimates, so Samsung could have sold 55 million smartphones or 155 million, no one would have known the exact figure. Samsung is probably the leader on the smartphone and mobile phone market, but I don't think that the difference compared to the other competitors is as big as some analysts think. Leaving aside Apple and Samsung, unfortunately RIM and Nokia recorded strong decreases compared to the same period last year and it's a shame that we come to the market with more than 2 companies fighting for the 1st place.
In the smartphone market, Android continued to increase its market share, up 19.9 percentage points in the third quarter of 2012. Although RIM lost market share, it climbed to the No. 3 position as Symbian is nearing the end of its lifecycle. There was also channel destocking in preparation of new device launches for RIM, which resulted in 8.9 million sales to end users in the third quarter of 2012. With the launch of iPhone 5, Gartner analysts expect iOS share will grow strongly in the fourth quarter of 2012 because users held on to their replacements in many markets ahead of the iPhone 5 wider roll out. Windows Phone's share weakened year-on-year as the Windows Phone 8 launch dampened demand of Windows Phone 7 devices.
