Apple succeeded to manage its supremacy in the Smartphone segment in Q4 (calendar) last year. The company sold over 37 million iPhones in Q4 (calendar), and incredibly recorded 128% of growth compare to the same calendar quarter a year ago. A research firm—Strategy Analytic—has reported that Apple was the top performer among the mobile handset manufacturer in Q4 last year. The firm also stated that the company shipped 93 million handsets in last year, noted 6% share of the worldwide handset market.
In Q4 (calendar) last year, Apple’s iPhone 4S was considered as the most preferred Smartphone. Beside iPhone 4S, the demand of the company’s third generation Smartphone avail by different operators was also seen to be high. Now, China has become Apple’s second largest market after US and expected to be dominated in 2012.
The total handset shipment in the Q4 last year rose by 11.3% to 445 million from 400 million units in the same quarter a year ago. However, Nokia was still at the top notch with the total shipment of 417 million units in last year, down from the shipment of 453 million units a year ago.
Strategy Analytics executive Director—Neil Mawston—said, “Nokia’s global handset shipments declined 8% annually to 113.5 million units in Q4 2011. Volumes were buoyed by the sales of Nokia’s low-end-dual-SIM models in emerging markets like Southeast Asia, but were a little soft overall, as initial shipments of Microsoft Lumia Phones could not offset declining Symbian sales.”
Samsung succeeded to grab the second position with the shipment of 95 million units in Q4 last year. Among 95 million handsets, Samsung shipped 35 million Smartphone in the last quarter, and 18% of the annual growth of the company was driven by Galaxy-branded 3G portfolio alone.
In 2011, Nokia occupied 26.9% of market share in the global Handset vendor, dropped from 33.3% in 2010, followed by Samsung with 21.1% market share in 2011. In the global Handset vendors market share categories Apple comes at the third position with 6.0% of the market share in 2011.
Due to the prolixity of Nokia towards its own OS Symbian and the company’s interest to work with Microsoft’s Windows Phone had swiped the company’s handset shipment last year. On the other side, Samsung’s low price strategy due to intense competition has plunged the profit margin of its Smartphone in Q4 compare to Q3, despite of its 30% growth in Q4 last year. On the contrary, last holiday session has tremendously boosted Apple’s shipment in Q4 (calendar) last year, whereas, the popularity of Android OS augmented the demand of Samsung in Q4 last year.
