Apple jumps to third place in handset league
iPhone 4S lets its vendor leapfrog LG and ZTE in the fourth quarter, says IDC, but overall handset market sees slowing growth
Published: 3 February, 2012
READ MORE: Metrics | Apple | Handset
Growth in the handset market has dropped to its lowest point in over two years, as featurephone numbers decline more rapidly than expected. This is not being offset entirely by smartphone conversions or multiple device ownership, as the recession continues to bite into consumer spending, but the success stories of the high end are still cashing in, with Apple moving to third place in the overall cellphone league table.
The figures come from IDC's latest quarterly survey, which saw that handset growth was just 6.1% year-on-year in the last quarter of 2011, the lowest rate since Q3 of 2009, "when the global economic recession was in full bloom" as senior research analyst Kevin Restivo put it. Total units in the quarter were 427.4m.
The emergence of the 'enhanced featurephone', which has web access and some apps, though not a full OS, is helping slow the market, since users have less urgency to move to full smartphones. Nokia is particularly aggressive in this hybrid territory, but the volumes in the sub-smart segments mean that all the top five vendors, except Apple, still rely mainly on featurephones for the bulk of their shipments, if not their profits. Those vendors are led by Nokia, still in first place despite an 8.2% year-on-year fall in Q4 shipments, and with its share down from 30.7% to 26.6%. But it is increasingly squeezed by Samsung, which increased its units by almost 21% and boosted its market share from 20% a year earlier to 22.8%.
Apple leapfrogged LG and ZTE to gain third place, its highest ever position, with a 128% leap in iPhone sales to 37m, giving it 8.7% share, up from 4%. LG was the biggest loser, falling out of its traditional number three slot with a huge 42.2% decline in shipments, seeing its share fall from 7.6% to 4.1%. Its sales of 17.7m units were at "levels not seen since the second quarter of 2007", said IDC. ZTE is closing on the Korean supplier too, growing its units by 8.9% and fewer than one million handsets behind LG.
"The mobile phone market exhibited unusually low growth last quarter, which shows it is not immune to weaker macroeconomic conditions worldwide," commented Restivo in a statement. "The introduction of high growth products such as the iPhone 4S, which shipped in the fourth quarter, bolstered smartphone growth."
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