Apple is the leader in the supply of smartphones

According to the results of the fourth quarter of 2011, Apple is the world leader in smartphone shipments. As for the tablet market, Android-based products are actively gaining points here. Windows, surprisingly, is also not lagging behind. 

The research company Strategy Analytics has published results on the supply of smartphones and tablets for the whole of 2011. The figures are very interesting, because they clearly demonstrate exactly how the mobile device market has changed over the past twelve months. Of course, there were no surprises, all the trends were obvious, but the Strategy Analytics report helps to make sure once again what we witnessed. 

According to the results of the fourth quarter, Apple is becoming the leader in the smartphone market, having shipped 37 million devices during the reporting period. Samsung is in second place with a minimum margin of 500 thousand delivered devices, and the Finnish concern Nokia closes the top three with 19.6 million gadgets.

Just a year ago – in the fourth quarter of 2010 – the situation was completely different. Nokia took the first place, then Apple went by a huge margin in terms of the number of devices shipped, and Samsung took the honorable third place. By the way, the difference in supplies between the last two companies was serious.

As you can see, everything has changed a lot in a year. 

If we talk about the total results for the year, and not for one “Christmas” quarter, then there is also an interesting result. Samsung managed to increase its global market share by almost 12% in just 12 months, becoming the leader with 19.9%. Next with a share of 19% is Apple. The company has grown by only 3% in a year. As for Nokia, it has lost more than half of its market. If, at the end of 2010, it had a share of 33.4%, then at the end of 2011, this share shrank to 15.8%. 

The total share of third-party companies in the smartphone market has changed insignificantly: it has grown from 42.7% to 45.2%. 

If we talk about tablets, then, at first glance, the situation has hardly changed: Apple takes the first place in the supply of such devices, followed by Android by a large margin. An important detail is that the degree of lag has noticeably decreased. Moreover, if we compare the results of shipments for the fourth quarter of 2011 and the same 2010, then Apple’s share decreased by more than 10%: from 68.2% to 57.6%. On the contrary, the share of devices based on Google OS has risen, and more than three times – to a record high of 39%.

Out of curiosity: in the last three months of 2011, the demand for tablets with the Microsoft operating system was growing. Moreover, it grew so impressively that manufacturers managed to ship 400 thousand devices in the fourth quarter, which gave the Windows platform a market share of as much as 1.5%. 

In total, 66.9 million tablets were shipped in 2011: this is 260% more than in 2010.