Phone maker and OS market shares: Samsung rises, Nokia slips

02 May, 2012

Those who keep score, Samsung recently overtook Nokia as the top mobile vendor in the world. Analysts from IDC and comScore have published their own studies that bring detailed info on the standings of phone makers and also mobile OS market shares.

IDC notes that the mobile market shrunk 1.5% compared to last year's first quarter. That's a loss for feature phones though - the smartphone market in Q1 of 2012 is up 42.5% year over year, beating IDC's expectations (but lower than the growth in Q4 2011).

Top Five Worldwide Smartphone Vendors Shipments and Market Share, Q1 2012 (Units in Millions) Source: IDC
Vendor	1Q12 Unit Shipments	1Q12 Market Share	1Q11 Unit Shipments	1Q11 Market Share	Year-over-year Change
Samsung	42.2	29.1%	11.5	11.3%	267.0%
Apple	35.1	24.2%	18.6	18.3%	88.7%
Nokia	11.9	8.2%	24.2	23.8%	-50.8%
Research In Motion	9.7	6.7%	13.8	13.6%	-29.7%
HTC	6.9	4.8%	9.0	8.9%	-23.3%
Others	39.1	27.0%	24.5	24.1%	59.6%
Total	144.9	100.0%	101.7	100.0%	42.5%

Samsung not only overtook Nokia in overall shipments, they also took back the position of top smartphone vendor from Apple. Their Galaxy line that covers several types of devices, screen size and price points led to a new record in the number of smartphones shipped in a quarter.

Strong user demand for iPhones and their availability with additional carriers put Apple in second place, well ahead of Nokia. The Finnish maker witnessed a huge drop in Symbian sales and Windows Phone isn't up to speed yet.

RIM, makers of BlackBerry, are also in transition - they'll be ditching the old OS for the cool new BlackBerry 10 - and they also saw a steep decline the last quarter. HTC didn’t do too hot in the US during the first quarter of this year, but the Asia/Pacific market propped them up and they kept the 5th place in smartphone shipments.

Speaking of OSes, comScore has plotted how each smartphone OS did in the US in the four month period ending in March. Android controls over half the market - 51% - and posted the biggest growth in percentage points.

Top Smartphone Platforms 3 Month Avg. Ending Mar. 2012 vs. 3 Month Avg. Ending Dec. 2011 Total U.S. Smartphone Subscribers Ages 13+ Source: comScore MobiLens
	Share (%) of Smartphone Subscribers
	Dec-11	Mar-12	Point Change
Total Smartphone Subscribers	100.0%	100.0%	N/A
Google	47.3%	51.0%	3.7
Apple	29.6%	30.7%	1.1
RIM	16.0%	12.3%	-3.7
Microsoft	4.7%	3.9%	-0.8
Symbian	1.4%	1.4%	0.0

iOS is second (and the only other OS to gain market share). It's got nearly a third of the US smartphone market. Meanwhile, BlackBerry and Microsoft's mobile OS shares declined and they are now well behind the top two. Symbian kept its measly 1.4% share in the US.

Source 1 • Source 2