In what seems to be yet another sign of the old order changing and giving way to new players in the mobile phone market, IDC’s Worldwide Quarterly Mobile Phone Tracker’s round-up of the fourth quarter of 2010, has shown Nokia and RIM giving ground to Samsung and HTC. While both companies recorded significant increases in units shipped as compared to Q4 2009 – Nokia shipped 28.3 million units as compared to 20.8 million in 2009, and RIM shipped 14.6 million as compared to 10.7 million – both lost in terms of market share, with Nokia slipping from 38.6% to 28% while RIM came down from 19.9% to 14.6%. In simple terms, in Q4 2009, Nokia and RIM accounted for more than half the cellphone units being shipped in the word, in Q4 2010 their share was a relatively modest 42.6%.
Closing the gap on Nokia have been Samsung and HTC, with the former shipping 9.7 million units in Q4 2010, more than five times what it shipped in the corresponding quarter in 2009 (1.8 million), and the latter shipping 8.6 million units, up from 2.4 million units in Q4 2009. Samsung’s Q4 2010 market share was 9.6% while HTC’s was 8.5%. And what of Apple? Well, the company had the same share of the market in Q4 2010 as it did in Q4 2009 – 16.1%, but it did push up its units shipped from 8.7 million units to 16.2 million units.
So where does that leave the world cellphone market at the end of 2010? Well, as per IDC, Nokia still is the leader with a 33.1%, with RIM in second place with 16.1%. Making up the top five are Apple (15.7%), Samsung (7.6%) and HTC (7.1%). The times they are a-changin’, eh?
