The mobile phone market may not be seeing the growth of previous years: Worldwide sales in 2009 totaled just over 1.21 billion units, a 0.9% decline from 2008, according to information technology research and advisory company Gartner Inc.
But within that, smartphones – mobile phones with advanced functions such as e-mail or Web access, to say nothing of mobile commerce – continue to be growth market. In 2009, smartphone sales reached 172.4 million units, a 23.8% increase from 2008.
The growth of smartphone sales is, if anything, accelerating. In fourth-quarter 2009, the market registered a single-digit growth as mobile phone sales to end users surpassed 340 million units, an 8.3% increase from fourth-quarter 2008. But smartphone sales increased by 41.1% over fourth-quarter 2008’s level, reaching 53.8 million sales during the most recent quarter.
According to Gartner, the big winners in the smartphone arena were smartphone-focused vendors like Apple and Research In Motion (RIM), which wrested captured market share from other larger device producers such as Nokia. RIM now controls 19.9% of the market, followed by Apple which accounts for 14.4% of it.
“We can expect 2010 to retain a strong focus around operating systems, services and applications while hardware takes a back seat,” said Carolina Milanesi, research director at Gartner, in a statement, adding that she anticipates overall sales of mobile devices to fall back to low-double-digit growth.
