A new market study by Canalys says that worldwide mobile device sales grew 45% from second quarter 2003 to 2004. Nokia, palmOne, and HP continue to dominate.
A new market report by Canalys claims a 45% increase in the sale of mobile devices between second quarter 2003 and second quarter 2004, with both data-centric and voice-centric devices showing strong growth. However, much of that growth is a rebound after an overall worldwide decline in handheld sales in 2003.
Sales of voice-centric devices, consisting of standard mobile phones and smartphones (phones that support native applications), grew 70% from last year to this year, while sales of data-centric devices, consisting of standard handhelds and communicators (handhelds that connect to a wide area network over GSM, CDMA, or similar) grew 26%. (This report classifies the palmOne Treo 600, Sony Ericsson P900, and similar voice-oriented communicators as smartphones.)
Not surprisingly, Nokia retained its traditional top spot in the overall worldwide market with 33.2% of all mobile device sales. Canalys estimates that Nokia accounted for over 80% of all Symbian OS device sales, and the majority of smartphone sales in most of the world. The exception is the North American market, where the palmOne Treo 600, which this report considers a smartphone rather than communicator, is the top selling smartphone by a wide margin. Nokia is, however, closing, due mostly to palmOne not being able to supply enough Treo 600s to meet demand.
palmOne was the second place worldwide seller of mobile devices with 18% of the market. The Treo 600 alone represented just under 15% of palmOne's device shipments in second quarter of 2004. Although it still holds the worldwide mobile device lead, European buyers have turned to HP more and more as HP has overtaken palmOne in the EMEA market. Although palmOne saw its overall shipments increase in second quarter, its overall marketshare decreased due to increasing sales for its competitors.
With 9% of the worldwide market, HP once again pulls into third place, due in no small part to its growing strength in Europe. RIM, however, was the big winner with a 333% growth since last year, pushing it into a close fourth place behind HP with 8% of the market. Sony Ericsson rounds out the top five with 3.8% of the market and a 3% drop in sales, the only decrease of any of the top five vendors.
Communicators were the fastest growing market segment, according to the report, with 194% growth year-on-year even without taking the Treo 600, Sony Ericsson P900, and similar devices into account. Much of that growth was due to RIM, naturally. Americans like their data, as the North American market was the only area where communicator shipments led smartphones. Sales of data-only handhelds, however, fell slightly in North America but rose 10% globally, particularly in Latin America. Smartphones grew 112% worldwide.
Fron an OS standpoint, Symbian has pushed into first place with 41% of sales, due in part of course to Nokia's strong smartphone showing. Microsoft's percentage of the market held fairly constant at about 22%, but PalmSource saw its share of the market drop from 30.9% last year to 22.5% this year, allowing Microsoft's 22.9% to just barely squeeze into second place. Coming in a distant fourth, GNU/Linux nearly doubled its shipments in the past year bringing the Free Software OS up to 1.9% of the worldwide market with 114,720 devices shipped in second quarter of 2004.
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