Android and iPhone driving smartphone sales

By on May 7, 2010 at 3:43 PM
General May 7, 2010

android-q1-2010

Twenty-Ten may be written down in the annals of history as the year of the smartphone. According to IDC’s analysis, smartphone shipments increased a whopping 56.7% year-over-year with vendors shipping 54.7 million converged devices in Q1 2010 alone. This impressive growth rate doubles that of the overall handset market which grew a comparatively low 21.7% YoY. Rising stars within the handset manufacturers include Apple, which saw its handset shipments increase a mind boggling 131% YoY, Motorola which posted an impressive 91% increase, and HTC which came in third with a 71% increase. The driving force behind these three smartphone manufacturers is the iPhone OS for Apple and Android for both Motorola and HTC. Though Nokia is still king of the hill with 39% of the market share and handset shipments of 21.5 million, the company out of Espoo should keep an eye on its back as Apple and the little green robot are coming on fast and furious.

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  • jdizzle

    Android is not a real smartphone platform.

    • Sugar Grove

      Be that as it may.
      Credit is still due to Apple for creating an environment of competiton that spawns the growth of so many new products and industries that were at best dormant for so long.

      • Peter Wong

        “Apple for creating an environment of competiton”

        LAWL. This isn’t by design but rather a consequence. If Apple had it’s way, there would be only one OS, one marketplace for Apps, one tool for developing said apps, and only one voice approving apps, all provided by one company whose products and any information about those products released when and where they desire.

      • Sugar Grove

        Most certainly, as would you if you owned the company. It’s a no brainer to assume they would place their interests first.
        Point I am making is that without someone, Say it was M$ that came out with a platform,store and product at this level in 2007 the same enviroment would exist.
        Ford didn’t invent the car, just knew how to market it.
        Edison wasnt the inventor of electricity nor Tesla
        one just knew how to exploit it.

      • Not So Fast

        There are other companies that try to grow the market instead. Sun comes to mind as an engineering company that failed to monetize its IP. Google is the logical successor (and fortunately they’re able to make lots of money).

      • user

        The phone market was dormant for so long? At best?

        If anything, it has been one of the most fast-moving industries to be in well before Apple decided to become a player.

        They took a different approach and won, and all credit to them for that, but let’s not say the hardware (and software) phone market was ever dormant.

    • Bob GRZR

      @jdizzle
      and you’re not a real smart person
      ^
      phone

  • Joel

    Jdizzle, if you think Android isn’t a smartphone OS, then Apple’s isn’t either. I would call Apple’s iPhone a iPod with internet/a gsm chip so you can make and receive calls. Other than that what does it do that makes it a ‘smartphone’

  • Jeff

    ……..also driving comment boards across the interwebz

  • MacMan

    Hmmm 3 iphones sell more than how many htc’s ????

    • Cold Dead Fingers

      That’s right, brother! iPhone is a beast

    • Crapple

      So how it is HTC’s fault, if Apple only wants to restrict itself to 3 models lolz, it is not like HTC went and begged Apple to please restrict yourself to 3 models. The dumbhead fans of Crapple take the cake in idiocy.

  • Giorgio

    @Joel,

    I am an iPhone and Android owner and I agree with you. I don’t believe it to be a true smartphone in th classical sense. Regardless, there is no doubt about the fact that it revolutionized the smartphone segment.

    I think the iPhone HD will squash most if not all of the “iPhone isn’t a true smartphone” arguements.

    I’m fiending for both that and the Galaxy S AT

  • Jeff

    hmmm 6 billion people in the world, and you want them to all be satisfied with one phone design and OS????

    • jonathan t

      Just wondering what would happen if Apple all of a sudden decides to port the Iphone OS to different manufacturers like HTC, Nokia, Motorola, Samsung, SE and etc. Especially with OS 4.0 around the corner it would make a better comparison to all the android devices. I know that won’t happen though, not with Apple’s success.

  • Analyzer

    Author,
    Are you making an assumption that HTC sales are driven by Android phones or was there data that supported that statement? HTC has more WM phones than Android. So which one drove their increase based on the facts?

    • El Bobito

      HTC sales increased during the same quarter they launched more Droid devices than WM devices. You do the math…

      Personally, I don’t see HTC dropping WinMo at any point in the near future. There is a lot of Droid coming down the pipe, particularly from HTC, which I do think will help drive their market share even higher. Once WM7 is on their devices, I don’t think anyone can say that it’s Droid or WM7, but both.

      However, my question on this is….Do the HTC numbers include the devices they make for others? They’ve made phones for RIM, Palm, Sony Ericson, etc. Are those phones counted as HTC phones, for the purposes of this little market share analysis?

  • Giorgio

    @Jeff,

    No, but Apple does. Hahaha.

    Posted from BGR Mobile (iPhone).

  • Bigfish

    Agree strongly @ Sugar.

    This is going to be a great year for us phone tech lovers, lots of options coming our way. I still have some requests that I hope to see in the near future though, like, more 4.3″ screens, 4G, better speakers on our thin touchscreen phones, good speaker phone quality like a n95 or touch pro2, new hardware for webos and death to fragmentation on Android.

    • Sugar Grove

      At the end of the day.. it’s just a device, whether it entertains you, allows you to simplify a task or call someone it’s just a device. There’s passion for the wants and needs of many people but it doesn’t make a sunset more special or a hug from a gal more rewarding.
      Just a device and if it’s means more … everything else must mean less.

  • SaDudE

    I like how Nokia is given a by line in the article…if you add everyone up except for other, they barely equal Nokia. Honestly that says a lot even though everyone on this forum has written Nokia off

    • Tdot34

      My guess is because this is a North American forum, and Nokia is not really a big player in North America anymore, as seen by the other story about North American market share posted earlier today. Nokia has 8.3% of the Market in the US.

      • SaDudE

        Yah but the other story also had apple at a whopping 5%…go figure

    • Jarrett

      For the record I have never and will never write Nokia off. I will say that their dominance is ending. Their being late will make for to much ground to catch up. As far as phones go Nokia is a goliath. That won’t end anytime soon. Nokia created most of the mobile technology we all use so they will stay relevant if not just by license fee’s alone.

      • rugbychix

        By what measure is their dominance ending? The continuing trend to compare apples to oranges statistically, which fan boys of all varieties love, is ridiculous. So year over year Nokia’s market share has been flat. But the number of smart phones that they sold increased from 13.7 M to 21.5 M. No one says to Microsoft, “they are vulnerable down because year over year they still have *only* 90% market share.” As long as there is growth in the particular industry, maintaining your commanding market share is commendable.

        Nokia’s eroded ASP is a far better topic to be critical about. And of course the effect on their net revenue that is having.

  • Dara

    Nokia doesn’t need an eye on its back, it needs to look forward.

    They have been too. Later this year they’ll have updates for both of their OS’s, Symbian and Maemo/Meego, and their Qt strategy comes into play. Within the year, a reasonably competent programmer will be able to develop an app that compiles for Windows, OS X, Linux, and Symbian.

    You might even be able to run the same OS, Meego, on your phone, desktop, tablet, laptop, netbook, and toaster.

    This, combined with their efforts to bring smartphone prices down in order to increase the global market, means that they’re heading into a big year for them in 2011.

    The N8 looks like it sets a new standard in imaging, which is appropriate since that standard is already locked up by Nokia’s current N series phones.

    The new C series phones are going to go head on with Android for the low price smartphone market and the new E series will be aimed at RIM.

    I don’t think they’ll have a competitor for iPhone until Symbian ^4 comes out in 2011 and they break S60 compatibility.

    Nokia has been at a disadvantage in simplifying their phones because of the need to cater to their massive (100′s of millions) amount of smartphone customers who weren’t freshly minted in 2007.

    Customers who has already learned to make use of all the options in Symbian can’t realistically share a phone platform with a bunch of neophytes who need a limited simplistic UI so as not to drown in their own pocket.

    Think “Awesome, I can hook this up to natively use my Asterisk PBX, Exchange mailbox, and existing network sharing” vs. “OMG, there are like 5 pages of settings!!1! Hurrr derp is there an app to let me watch the internets?”

    I think Nokia will transition most of their current customers to Meego and use Symbian^4 as an “American” friendly platform. Hide all the confusing settings, nerf it to whatever standard the US carriers demand, and use a bunch of simple checkboxes(Facebook, Skype, gmail, etc..) to configure the phone.

    • Jarrett

      To Nokia I say good luck. I remember four years ago their CEO suggested that in that coming year they would be the largest supplier of digital cameras and MP3 players in the world. They were going to be selling more camera’s then Canon and Nikon combined. The best one though was how they were going to take Apple’s crown away in both the MP3 player market and the digital music sales market.
      Plans are great to have, executing those plans isn’t something Nokia has been unable to do in the last few years. This next week we will see if the shareholders get their wish and Nokia removes their current CEO. I would love for Nokia to get stable so I can make a little bit of money from their stock.

      • Jarrett

        Just because I don’t think to many of you remember or are smart enough to figure it out. Those claims of Nokia’s were based on the cameras on their phones and the phone ability to play music files. The phones were both going to be their cameras and MP3 players in the market.

      • Dara

        Jarrett,

        I won’t cite anything as reliable as an Apple TV spot or Steve Jobs speech and quite frankly I don’t really care enough on a Friday to run numbers, but here’s a link to wikipedia that states that Nokia, with it’s hundreds of millions of devices sold per year, is the biggest producer of cameras and mp3 players in the world.

        http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nokia#Devices

      • Jarrett

        @ Dara,

        Why would you post something that stupid? You might be the most educated person on this blog and yet you post something that ignorant. How many poeple seriously use their phone as their mp3 player? Especailly a non-iTunes connectable phone? Yeah I know, iTunes doesn’t count because it’s bloated and it sucks. It controls the market for media but it sucks, I get it. How many photographers use their cell phone camera when shooting anything? I will answer for you, not enough. Your lack of understanding numbers when it comes to business just amazes me. How a person (you) can be as intelligent as you are and yet post something so ridiculous is amazing.

        I have uttered some rediculous things on this site, somethings I read over and just laugh at the tragedy that I just posted. You should be ashamed with that one. Atleast be man/woman enough to come out and admit that for all your intelligence you embarrased yourself and most of the internet with Nokia being the largest producer of cameras and MP3 players comment.

      • itin

        Jarrett – what kind of a rude jerk goes off on a tangent because you don’t understand her point. Dara didn’t claim Nokia sold the best or even most used cameras/mp3s but just the most. Its like saying Ford doesn’t sell more cars than Porsche because they aren’t excellent cars.

        I don’t know if they DO sell the most, but with a camera on every one of their phones, I would say they are. Whether they get used, thats a different conversation.

      • Dara

        LOL what exactly did you think you meant when you typed “largest supplier of digital cameras and MP3 players in the world”?

        Listen Jarrett, I’ve told you about the technological bubble you’ve been living in.

        There are tens of millions of N series devices that take pictures like this on a cloudy day:

        http://imgur.com/9Qcvk.jpg

        I uploaded that directly from the phone using Opera Mobile. I could have stripped the exif tag with another app but I didn’t to leave the data intact.

        Most of the new music that I hear comes through my phone first. I’m usually downloading stuff off rss/atom feeds from my favorite music blogs. If a song comes up through conversation, or perhaps Shazam, I’m one google search and a couple of minutes of downloading away from hearing it again. My friends and I can pass all this music around freely via bluetooth.

        There are tens of millions of people doing the exact same thing and video calling their friends for free to tell them about it.

        Consider how many people in the world will take their first picture, send their first email, navigate their first gps route, play their first mp3, or surf the web, on a Nokia.

        Going forward, they’ll have the benefit of the camera technology developed by Nokia and all of the more advanced tricks that have been perfected in Nokia’s high end devices.

        Whatever the usage rate is now, it’s climbing and will continue. But Nokia will continue to be the biggest supplier of digital cameras and mp3 players, as well as phones, in the world.

      • user

        “I have uttered some rediculous things on this site, somethings I read over and just laugh at the tragedy that I just posted. ”
        —————
        Looks like you can add this one to the pile.

        Your statement of “largest supplier of digital cameras and MP3 players in the world” is precisely that. Supplier.

        Speaks nothing of users who make use of them versus dedicated devices.

    • Sugar Grove

      @Dara
      I had a Nokia communicator 9450 way back in the day and loved it, unfortunately the carrier at the time Tmobile didnt really offer much in the way of data plans that inspired me to use it more.
      I think your comments were on point.

    • http://www.maemo-freak.com christexaport

      hate all you want, but more people access the internet, tell time, listen to music, take pictures, and run mobile apps on Nokia devices than any other tech manufacturer. In facty, Nokia has eliminated alot of the iPod’s marketshare, digital watch marketshare, and total computer share. Nokia is the biggest maker of computers in the world.

      Accept it.

  • TypicalAndroidFanboyDBAG

    Iphone and apple suck.

    • Jarrett

      I agree!

  • Max

    Looks like the boring phones RIM is putting out is already having an effect. Already down first quarter 2010. Steeper declines to come.

    • Jarrett

      @ Max,

      RIM sold 10.5 million phones in the first quarter 2010. The only thing RIM suffered from was not as much growth as iPhone OS and Android. RIM still grew 40%+ for the YOY quarter it’s just that Apple grew at 131% and Android phones grew at approximately 80%. All this means is this Q1 numbers versus last years Q1. RIM is doing fine and will continue to do fine. Just like every platform, blackberry has a very large and loyal following.

      • AJF

        At least half their following is non-business users who are already leaving RIM for Android. RIM will begin a slow slide downhill as the year progresses because they have no idea how to innovate let alone keep up with the competition. Head over to Crackberry, a site devoted to BB Fanboys and even there they are all getting tired of RIMs outdated phones and OS.

      • Jarrett

        Until RIM starts to show signs in their quarterly reports of slowing down, I just can’t see them actually slowing down. Businesses love RIM and BES.

      • Such nice keyboards

        My daughter is 13 and wouldn’t trade her Tour for my Nexus One (T Mobile aside), an iPhone or an Incredible. She sends about 6k texts a month. I just wish I could get the blackberry without a data plan (which she doesn’t really use other than an occasional FB update) on Verizon.

      • Billum

        RIM is screwed. Face it man there are plenty of other handsets that have keyboards to text with. I know plenty of former BB owners that jumped ship to Android and iPhone. RIM is BORNING and their OS is sooo out of date!

        If RIM had half a clue they would have purchased Palm but they are way too lame to pull it off.

      • itin

        RIM’s biggest problem isn’t anyone else at this point, its OS fragmentation. It is slowing RIM down innovating, and it is very frustrating to developers.

        If they can develop a more unified OS that adapts to the hardware instead of rewritting the same code over and over.

        Eventually, the a similar problem will seriously affect Android.

  • iamajim

    well, if you read the g*d damn chart you see rim is number 2; i’d say their still dominant, ahead of crApple and probably going to stay that way. didn’t they hire that guy away from crApple, some kinda software geek? things will change, too much at stake.

  • SDreamer

    Yeah, it’s driving sales of smartphones to people who don’t need a smartphone, namely, teenagers. Forget the excuse of touch texting, they literally have to look at the screen to text as they drive now, and still say they are safe drivers >.>

  • sam

    Nokia increased the number of smartphones they sold by 7.5m, that almost as many smartphones Apple sells, and 1.5 times the number of the Android smartphones sold.

    So if anyone is _driving_ smartphone sales, it’s Nokia.

    Apple and Android are growing nicely, but at the expense of Windows mobile, not Nokia.

  • Mace

    Outside USA everybody is using Nokia phone to play mp3. You can download free music from anywhere and use also Symbian bittorrent client. This all beats Apple and iTunes 6-0. Nokia really is the biggest mp3 and camera manufacturer in the world, just as they promised. With the new N8, Nokia will make also compact cameras obsolete.

  • ThisGuy

    BGR needs to stop swinging from Apple and Android’s nuts. Seriously, Nokia needs to get credit for selling more smartphones than anyone else…..by a large margin. Next time you write a story like this, make sure to give credit to the real king of smartphones by putting Nokia’s name in the title.

  • jonathan

    I sport an iPhone now but I have had nokia N series phones for the last 6 years and ending with the N95 8 gb. Love it. having gone abroad many times around Asia, you see the big presence of Nokia all over. I believe they still make the best phones just sad to see they have not made much of a presence in the US with android, RIM and the Iphone dominating. I do wish them luck here in the US.

    Posted from BGR Mobile (iPhone).

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