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The Smartphone sales stats for last quarter are out… have a read!

Kantar Worldpanel ComTech just released their quarterly update showing operating system share of smartphone sales. Their stats always make interesting reading.

Here’s what Kantar has to say:

Apple’s iPhone 4S launch has helped the company regain global momentum with the US driving growth, according to new data from Kantar Worldpanel ComTech. In the latest 12 weeks of sales*, Apple’s share was at 44.9% while Android took 44.8% of the US market. Apple also increased its share of the British smartphone market from 22.0% a year ago to 34.0%.

Dominic Sunnebo, global consumer insight director, explains: “Apple has continued its strong sales run in the US, UK and Australia over the Christmas period.  Overall, Apple sales are now growing at a faster rate than Android across the nine countries we cover.”

Windows 7 is yet to break past a 2% share in any country despite the media attention gained by the new Nokia Lumia range. The Nokia Lumia 800 finished quarter four just outside of the top 10 smartphones sold in Great Britain.

Dominic continues: “BlackBerry remains the brand of choice in the smartphone gifting market, 57% of BlackBerrys were purchased as gifts in quarter four.  This rose to 76% during December and a whopping 55% of recipients were under 16, indicating BlackBerry’s hold on the UK youth market.”

Looking at Latin America, it is clear that Android is starting to make a big impact.  Although the smartphone market is still in its infancy, Android took a 28% share in Brazil and 20% in Mexico.

Dominic Sunnebo comments: “Brazil and Mexico have a combined population of over 300 million, meaning that the mobile opportunity is huge.  By staking an early claim on the smartphone market in these countries, Android is laying important groundwork for future sales from the increasingly affluent middle classes.  Over the next few years, Asian manufacturers such as Huawei and ZTE are likely to focus smartphone sales on these regions. Their ability to offer prices under $100 will be crucial to their success.”

In Great Britain, smartphones made up 70.7% of sales over the 12 weeks, meaning that 48.9% of the British population now own a smartphone.

When considering a brands performance, it is important to bear in mind that all countries covered in the survey are experiencing strong smartphone growth, meaning a share decline does not necessarily correspond to a drop in actual sales.

* 12 w/e 25 Dec 2011

And here are the actual statistic breakdowns. Click through to a larger image:

Screen Shot 2012 01 25 at 11 32 00

8 COMMENTS

  1. So, I guess the interesting question is this..

    Has Symbian disappeared from the shelves because people stopped buying them, or has losing shelf space caused people to stop buying them?

  2. Anecdotally, the 600/603/700/701 devices never made much of an appearance as far as I can tell – I’ve certainly never seen one in a store and I was thinking about upgrading an N8 to one of them, maybe buying a cheap one for my son who is just about old enough for a proper smartphone. You can’t get an android with sufficient gaming prowess for that age group at the right price yet.

    You can still buy an N8 or E7 in some stores, but those are now pretty ancient phones – who is knowingly going to buy a contract phone over 1 year old?

  3. I had a reply typed up but disqus ate it 🙁

    The Nokia results are out today. It seems that Symbian was still able to sell 18x as many phones as WP, with virtually no shelf presence in any of its former stronghold markets. It also looks as though the ‘dead duck’ N9 sold better too, despite being launched in an already-dead state. I have a lot of sympathy for Nokians out there reading the results today, they’re very disappointing.

    I don’t know what kind of deal they made with MS, but if it involved slowing sales of their other platforms, they made a bad one. They’re trading shelf space for one or two handsets with a portfolio large enough to have previously had its own segment in most stores.

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