iPhone Gaining on Nokia’s Dominance

Apple’s iPhone is moving closer and closer  to Nokia’s top spot in smartphones globally, according to first-quarter 2011 results reported by IDC on Thursday.

With the iPhone in the second spot, BlackBerry maker Research In Motion dropped to third after finishing second a year ago, IDC said. 99.6 million smartphones shipped in the first quarter, out of 372 million mobile phones overall.

Nokia sold 24.2 million smartphones in the first quarter, holding on to its global smartphone lead despite announcing that it will move from Symbian to Windows Phone as its main smartphone operating system in next few years, IDC said. Nokia “may find itself in danger of ceding market share as the competition ramps up,” IDC said.

Apple shipped 18.7 million iPhones in the first quarter, IDC said, a new record for a single quarter, “and inched closer to market leader Nokia, with fewer than 6 million units separating the two companies,” IDC noted.

Apple also had triple-digit growth in the U.S., with the Verizon Wireless CDMA iPhone 4, and in greater China.

RIM, while down from second place where it was a year ago, remained in third place from the fourth quarter of 2010. The majority of RIM’s shipments are older, lower-cost devices, IDC noted, a trend that will continue in the second quarter.

Samsung finished fourth in smartphones for the first quarter, with 10.8 million smartphones shipped, while HTC finished fifth, with 8.9 million shipped.

Samsung grew the most of any vendor for the first quarter — 350% year-over-year. Samsung has a multiple-OS strategy and sells mostly Android smartphones, including Galaxy S phones, as well as Windows Phone 7 and Wave devices.

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HTC Profits Rise, Lead By Android Popularity

Taiwan smartphone maker HTC Corp said first-quarter profit almost tripled, beating forecasts, driven by strong demand for its mobile devices, especially those running on Google’s Android operating system.

The company, which has just overtaken industry giant Nokia in terms of market capitalization, said on Friday that first-quarter net profit was $511 million.

“That its first quarter would be above expectations was well foreseen, Q1 seasonality was better than expected,” said Bonnie Chang, an analyst at Yuanta Securities in Hong Kong.

“For the second quarter everyone is expecting revenue sequential growth in the high teens to 20 percent, shipments will be strong and average selling prices are holding up pretty well.”

Growing demand for phones running on Google’s Android platform will help the smartphone market grow in 2011, boosting companies such as HTC and Samsung Electronics who are betting on the platform.

The smartphone market is likely to grow 58 percent this year and 35 percent the next, according to research firm Gartner.

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Android To Control Smartphone Market By 2016

Android will be the operating system of choice for 45% of smartphones shipped by the year 2016. It will take up most of the market share vacated by the soon-to-be exiting of Nokia’s Symbian operating system, according to figures released today by ABI Research.

Although Android will come to be the dominant player in the smartphone market, this doesn’t mean that OSes will necessarily see a big cut in their own market shares, ABI said.

In fact, the firm projects that Apple’s iOS will see its market share rise from 16% in 2010 to 19% in 2016, while Research In Motion’s BlackBerry OS is expected to fall slightly from 16% in 2010 to 14% in 2016. Microsoft’s Windows Phone 7 and Samsung’s Bada will also be players in the 2016 smartphone market, as ABI projects those two operating systems to take 10% and 7%, respectively.

ABI vice president Kevin Burden says that although RIM stands to lose a bit between now and 2016, the company will carve a comfortable niche for itself in the enterprise market, as enterprise users will still need the security provided by RIM’s network operations center.

“RIM’s slight loss of share doesn’t mean falling shipments,” he says. “RIM has found its niche, but the consumer market will grow faster than its portion of it.”

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Android Takes Top Spot

Android smartphones bested iPhone and BlackBerry devices for the first time in the U.S. in the latest Nielsen Co. survey conducted right before Verizon Wireless began selling Apple’s iPhone.

Android devices made by several phone makers were used by 29% of the U.S. market in the November through January reporting period. That compares to 27% each for both Apple iPhones and BlackBerry devices from Research in Motion, Nielsen said.

In Nielsen’s most recent report from December, the three top smartphone operating systems were in a statistical dead heat, a Nielsen spokeswoman said Friday.

Microsoft’s Windows Mobile and Windows Phone 7 smartphones garnered 10% of the U.S. market from November through January, while the WebOS from Hewlett-Packard gained 4% and Symbian from Nokia earned 2%.  Read More…

Verizon Caps Data

Verizon Wireless will join AT&T in implementing data caps in the very near future, probably in mid-summer, Verizon CFO Fran Shammo said at an investor’s conference Tuesday.

The exact timing for the move to a tiered-pricing structure has not been announced, however. AT&T squashed unlimited data plans for new customers last year.

Verizon has been selling the iPhone 4 since Feb. 10 with a $30 unlimited plan, which also applies to other smartphones it sells that are on the Verizon CDMA/EV-DO network.

Shammo said some of the details of the data caps and tiered pricing will come when Verizon launches the HTCThunderbolt on LTE soon. Thunderbolt will have a 4.3-in. screen and run Android, Verizon said in January. Read More….

Google Dethrones Symbian From Smartphones Top Spot

Google’s Android dethroned Nokia’s Symbian as the global leader in smartphone operating systems in the last quarter of 2010, ending a reign that began with the birth of the industry approximately ten years ago.

The changing of the guard reflects just how quickly Google, which offers its software to phone makers for free, has risen to the top of the smartphone market ahead of Apple’s rapid ascension. Google and Apple have revolutionized the smartphone market in recent years, sending Nokia scrambling.

In the fourth quarter, phonemakers sold 32.9 million Android-equipped phones globally, roughly seven times more than the year-earlier quarter, compared with Symbian’s sales of 31 million, according to Research firm Canalys.

The numbers also highlight Google’s success in battling Apple, whose shipments of its popular iPhone increased to 16.2 million from 8.7 million in the fourth quarter of 2009.

Unlike Apple or Nokia, Google does not make its own phone hardware but instead offers its Android operating system free to other phone makers who can customize it to suit their devices.

As a result, Android has become the standard software for many phone makers. U.S. phone maker Motorola Inc has even managed to stage a comeback of sorts by focusing solely on Android after years of heavy market share losses….. Read More

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