Egham, UK, November 15, 2011—
Worldwide sales of mobile devices totaled 440.5 million units in the third quarter of 2011, up 5.6 percent from the same period last year, according to Gartner, Inc. Non-smartphone devices performed well, driven by demand in emerging markets for low-cost devices from white-box manufacturers, and for dual-subscriber identity module (SIM) devices.
Sales into the channel reached 460 million units. Gartner analysts said this increase was because of inventory build-up in the channel partly because of the shipping of new devices late in the quarter but mostly to prepare the channel for the holiday season. Gartner expects most of the build-up to be sold by the first quarter of 2012.
"Our forecast for the end of the year remains broadly in line at a worldwide level as regions such as Asia/Pacific and the Middle East and Africa make up for weaker performance in the Western European market," said Annette Zimmermann, principal analyst at Gartner based in Munich.
Smartphone sales to end users reached 115 million units in the third quarter of 2011, up 42 percent from the third quarter of 2010. Sequentially, smartphone sales slowed to 7 percent growth from the second quarter of 2011 to the third quarter of 2011. Smartphone sales accounted for 26 percent of all mobile phone sales, growing only marginally from 25 percent in the previous quarter.
"Strong smartphone growth in China and Russia helped increase overall volumes in the quarter, but demand for smartphones stalled in advanced markets such as Western Europe and the U.S. as many users waited for new flagship devices featuring new versions of the key operating systems," said Roberta Cozza, principal research analyst at Gartner. "Slowdowns also occurred in Latin America and the Middle East and Africa."
http://www.gartner.com/it/page.jsp?id=1848514IOS making steady gains, Microsoft is actually dropping. Their user base seems to be very vocal though in the small minority. More interesting again is despite the fact that it was made clear that ALL WP7 devices released since the OS's inception will be upgraded to Mango, adoption is still down the tubes.
Even Bada is seeing more daylight!
That MS/Nokia partnership is gonna have to pull off nothing short of a miracle.
Can't help much that the creamy source code goodness of Ice Cream Sandwhich has already dropped into the hands of modders and will soon ship on new devices. Mmmm, mmmmm cant wait!!!
