Apple’s Share of Worldwide Mobile Phone Market Grows by 91 %

[Maura]

Tech Fortune’s Apple 2.0 blog reports that Gartner issued its Q2 report today, in which it said that Apple’s share of the global mobile phone market almost doubled year on year in Q2 of 2011, showing an increase from 2.4% to 4.6%. This means that Apple is now the fourth biggest mobile (not just smartphone) vendor in the world, but still trailing behind Nokia, Samsung and LG. As far as the purely smartphone market is concerned, Gartner’s figures show that Apple’s share of that rapidly growing market grew by 29% in Q2, up to 14.1% from 18.2%, meaning that Apple's iOS (not including the iPad or iPod touch) is now third in the smartphone operating systems list, behind Google’s Android, which grew by 152%, and Nokia’s Symbian, which fell by 46%. Gartner said that smartphone sales were up 74 % year-on-year.

“Apple continued to exceed expectations, even though the iPhone 4 will soon be replaced by a new model. Part of its growth came from the 42 new carriers and 15 new countries that it entered in the second quarter of 2011, which brought its total coverage to 100 countries. This expansion caused its inventory to grow a little by the end of the second quarter of 2011, when sales to end users stood at 19.6 million units. In mainland China, Apple is the seventh-largest mobile phone vendor and the third-largest smartphone vendor.” - Gartner.

Source: Gartner: Apple's share of mobile market grew 91% in Q2 - Apple 2.0 - Fortune Tech