Smartphones were the bright spot in a global mobile handset
market that slipped 6% to 286.1 million units in the second quarter
of 2009, according toGartner
's latest research.
Smartphone sales rocketed past 40 million units, 27% up on the
same period last year, representing the fastest growing segment of
the mobile devices market.
Carolina Milanesi, research director at Gartner, said
touch-screen and qwerty devices drove replacement sales.
But the average selling price (ASP) decline accelerated in the
first half of the year, and particularly affected manufacturers
that focus on mid-tier and low-end devices, where margins are
already slim, she said.
Distributors soaked up lower demand and financial pressure by
destocking, selling 13.9 million units before ordering more.
Gartner expects manufacturers to benefit in the second half of 2009
as the channel restocks.
Strong competition
Nokia retained its market lead, but sold just 500,000 of its
flagship high-end
N97 smartphones in the channel since it started to ship in
June, compared with Apple's
iPhone 3GS, sales of which reached
one million in its first weekend.
There are unconfirmed reports that Nokia is reducing its
reliance on the
Symbian Foundation to supply its operating system by expanding
its relationship with Intel on the Maemo platform. Today Nokia is
expected to announce a deal to add Microsoft Office to its
Symbian-based phones. This would be in addition to a 2007 deal to
run Windows Live applications on Nokia's Series 40 phones.
"The right high-end product and an increased focus on services
and content are vital for Nokia if it wants to both revamp its
brand and please investors with a more promising outlook in ASPs
and margins," said Milanesi.
The big winner in the smartphone area has been Apple, now that
it has fixed its software and
introduced a faster iPhone. Apple grew its market share from
under 3% to more than 13%. This threatened Research In Motion's
Blackberry, but was still less than a third of Nokia's
volume.
Milanesi said, "Given the higher margins, smartphones offer the
biggest opportunity for manufacturers. It is the fastest growing
market segment and the most resistant to declining ASPs."
Smartphone OS trends
In the smartphone operating system (OS) market, Symbian held
51%, down from 57% a year ago, while RIM and Apple each grew their
share year on year.
Android's share was just under 2%, with more Android-based
devices expected to come to market in the fourth quarter of 2009,
intensifying competition in the smartphone OS market, particularly
for Symbian and Windows Mobile. Microsoft's share continued to drop
year on year to account for 9% of the market in the second quarter
of 2009.
The Palm Pre attracted a lot of media attention, but sales only
reached 205,000 units.