Friday, April 29, 2011

Worldwide mobile phones market up 20% in Q1

The global mobile phone market in the first quarter of this year increased 19.8 percent year-over-year, mostly fueled by booming smartphone sales, especially in emerging countries, according to the new data from technology firm IDC.

The number of units shipped was up to 371.8 million, compared to 310.5 million in the same quarter in 2010, TechCrunch reported.

The key catalyst of the growth is rising smartphone adoption, especially in the Asia Pacific region (excluding Japan), the Middle East and Africa and Latin America. The nearly 20 percent growth rate was also higher than the 18 percent in the previous quarter, MediaPost reported.

"Increasingly, mobile phone makers and carriers are making smartphones affordable to a wider variety of people, which has helped drive the market to new heights," according to IDC in a statement released Friday.

The research firm also expects mobile phone sales growth to be driven almost entirely by smartphone sales throughout 2015, The Wall Street Journal reported.

Among leading device makers, Nokia remained on the top by shipment volume, but its market share dropped significantly in the first quarter to 29.2 percent, compared to 34.7 percent a year earlier.

Samsung and LG followed. Samsung had 18.8 percent market share while LG 6.6 percent in the first quarter.

Apple and China's ZTE came in fourth and fifth, with 5 percent and 4.1 percent share, respectively.

Image: Flickr

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