The analyst house has highlighted a two-percent year-on-year drop in quarterly sales of handsets, although it says smartphone sales are continuing to shoot up
Retail sales of mobile phones have dropped for the first time in almost two years, according to Gartner.
The analyst house said on Wednesday that sales for the first
quarter of 2012 totalled 419.1 million units, down two percent year-on-year. It said it was likely to have to adjust its
forecasts for the whole of 2012 down by around 20 million units.
Mobile phone sales are falling but smartphones, such as the Samsung Galaxy S III (pictured), are doing well, Gartner has said.Image credit: Ben Woods/ZDNet UK
"Global sales of mobile devices declined more than expected due to
a slowdown in demand from the Asia/Pacific region," principal research
analyst Anshul Gupta said in a statement. "The first quarter,
traditionally the strongest quarter for Asia — which is driven
by Chinese New Year, saw a lack of new product launches from leading
manufacturers, and users delayed upgrades in the hope of better
smartphone deals arriving later in the year."
The Korean manufacturer overtook Nokia during
the quarter, selling 86.6 million handsets to the Finnish company's 83.2 million, according to the analyst firm. In the 12 months to the end of March, Samsung's market share rose from 16.1
percent to 20.7 percent, and Nokia's fell from 25.1 percent to 19.8
percent.
Apple is in third place with a 7.9-percent market share — up
from 3.9 percent a year ago — and sales of 33.1 million handsets
during the most recent quarter.
Smartphones continue to be the star performers in the mobile
market, with sales up 44.7 percent year-on-year, according to Gartner's figures. It noted
that Android-based phones accounted for 56.1 percent of all smartphone
sales during the quarter. This is a slightly higher share than the
50.1 percent suggested
by Kantar WorldPanel in a report released on Tuesday.
"Samsung took
back the world's number one smartphone position from Apple,
selling 38 million smartphones worldwide," Gartner said. "In addition,
Samsung's Android-based smartphone sales in the first quarter of 2012
represented more than 40 percent of Android-based smartphone sales
worldwide; no other vendors achieved more than a 10-percent share of
the market."
Less successful
Nokia's sales for the quarter were down 22.7 percent year-on-year.
Gupta pointed out that this again came down to smartphones —
around 44 percent of Samsung's sales were smartphones, while the devices accounted for just 16 percent of Nokia's sales.
Smartphone sales are becoming of paramount importance at a worldwide level.
– Anshul Gupta, Gartner
"Smartphone sales are becoming of paramount importance at a
worldwide level," Gupta said.
Nokia's difficulty in the smartphone market is largely down to its
switch from the ageing Symbian OS to Windows Phone. As the company's
recent
results have shown, the uptake of Nokia's Windows Phones is not
nearly enough to compensate for the dramatic fall-off in Symbian
sales.
Research In Motion (RIM) is also seeing its share shrivel. In the
first quarter of 2011, it sold 13 million BlackBerry smartphones and
had a three-percent share of the global handset market. A year on, it
sold 9.9 million devices for a 2.3-percent share.
"RIM desperately needs to deliver winning BB10 [BlackBerry
10] products to retain users and stay competitive," Gupta said.
"This will be very challenging, because BB10 lacks strong developer
support, and a new BB10 device will only
be available in the fourth quarter of 2012."
While Android is rapidly taking sales and market share from its
older rivals, Gupta suggested that Android manufacturers are struggling to differentiate their products.
He said high-end Android devices such as those sold by Samsung
could be differentiated by applications and services, which in turn
depend on "intellectual property assets". However, companies making lower-end
devices can only make their products stand out on the basis of
price.
"This will only worsen with the entry of new players and the
dominance of Chinese manufacturers, leading to increased competition,
low profitability and scattered market share," Gupta added.
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