Apple Named 2011’s Number One Worldwide Smartphone Vendor Ahead of Nokia

[Maura]

AppleInsider reports that according to new figures from Canalys, Apple is now the top smartphone vendor in the world as a result of a spectacular 2011, when it sold 37 million iPhones, which smashed Nokia’s quarterly record of 28.3 million phones sold.

“Apple’s performance meant that it displaced Nokia, for the first time, as the leading smart phone vendor by annual shipments,” said Canalys.

Canalys says that what makes these latest figures particularly interesting is that they clearly show a trend towards mobile devices above the PC, which Canalys VP and principle analyst Chris Jones calls a “significant milestone.”

The Canalys report also says that the firm believes that smartphone market growth will slow down in 2012, with vendors putting more emphasis on controlling costs and maximizing profitability.

As far as Canalys’s take on the growth of other smartphone vendors in the past year, the firm says that growth in shipment of Android phones was significantly higher than that of Apple’s iPhone, not just in Q4 but in the entire year, although the percentage of growth of Android phones has decreased from 244% in 2010 to 149% in 2011. Canalys attributes Android’s growth to Samsung’s success with the platform, although it notes that Sony Ericsson, Huawei, Motorola, LG and HTC in particular have also all experienced growth in sales of their Android phones during 2011. Unfortunately for Sony Ericsson, Motorola and LG though, this growth in sales did not translate in to profits, unlike Apple.

Source: http://www.appleinsider.com/articles...pc_growth.html

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