FutureFive New Zealand - Consumer technology news & reviews from the future
Story image
Sun, 28th Feb 2010
FYI, this story is more than a year old

Apple doubled its iPhone sales in 2009 and now holds the third largest global market share in smartphones, according to a new report from Gartner.

Right behind the Symbian OS, used on Nokia, and Research in Motion (RIM), used by BlackBerry, Apple now holds 14.4% of the global smartphone market share. Symbian held 46.9% while RIM 19.9% of the market.

Apple grew its worldwide market share from 8.2% in 2008 to the 14.4% that it currently holds. But in terms of sales, Apple more than doubled its sales of iPhones, selling 11.4 million units sold in 2008, but 24.9 million units in 2009.

As Apple grew, both Symbian and RIM lost significant market share with Symbian dropping 6% and RIM dropping 3% from 2008. But Android made significant gains, going from non-existent in 2008 to holding 4% market share in 2009.

In contrast, a report from ABI Research, which measures smartphone sales from quarter to quarter, said that Android was starting to pounce on Apple’s market share in the last quarter or 2009.

In a story on MacRumors.com, the site said that smartphones sales only account for 14% of the total market, and iPhone didn’t break into the top five mobile phone vendors. Worldwide sales of all mobile phones were pinned at 1.2 billion, which was down slightly from 2008.