Nokia retains top spot in smartphone market

Finnish manufacturer Nokia shipped the most smartphones in 2008, but its worldwide market share continues to decrease as rivals roll out popular, high-profile handsets, according to Gartner. It also said Apple and Research In Motion commanded some of the biggest year-over-year gains at Nokia's expense, with HTC showing a healthy increase as well.

According to the research firm, Nokia sold 60.9 million smartphones last year for a total market share of 43.7 percent. That's more than double the market share of its closest competitor, Research In Motion, which commanded 16.6 percent.

But even as Nokia continues to claim the biggest piece of cell phone pie, its outlook is mixed. From 2007, Nokia's smartphone sales grew by just 0.8 percent, and its market share dropped from 49.4 percent. While Gartner predicts that the company's low-end smartphones will continue to remain competitive, its higher-end N series handsets are facing stiff competition.

Thanks to devices like the BlackBerry Bold and the BlackBerry Storm, RIM's market share went from 9.6 percent in 2007 to 16.6 percent in 2008. It also boosted overall sales by 96.7 percent.

Apple posted even better growth with the worldwide introduction of the iPhone 3G. Its marker share rose from 2.7 percent in 2007 to 8.2 percent in 2008, while its overall sales increased by 245.7 percent (3.3 million devices sold in 2007 vs. 11.1 million sold in 2008).

HTC, which introduced the T-Mobile G1 and the HTC Touch Diamond in 2008, also finished the year off well. The Taiwan-based manufacturer boosted handset sales by 58.4 percent. What's more, its worldwide market share climbed from 3 percent in 2007 to 4.2 percent in 2008.

Samsung was not listed separately in the 2008 year-end list, but thanks to touch-screen handsets like the Samsung Omnia it posted a market share in the fourth quarter of 2008 of 4.2 percent, which was up from 1.8 percent during the same period in 2007.

[aelalfy1989]

NOkia is a strong cellphone seller but they need to come with a good comeback to catch up with apple. Because to me they seem to be dominating.

>[CNET editor's note: Prohibited spam deleted.]

[7aji88]

catch up with Apple?? You mean Apple needs to catch up with them. Nokia has much better smart phones with tons of functions including a decent camera (duh!! It's 2009) Also their S60 platform works much nicer than the iPhone OS

[seven7dust]

there's a big difference between traditional smartphones and the new touchscreen smartphones like the IPhone,G1 etc.
while keyboards are good enough for typing out emails and basic navigation, when it comes to web browsing and applications
touchscreens r the way to go and hence will rule the future smartphone market

touchscreen phones need to be separated into another table
cause that will show us who's really ahead !

BTW Nokia's smartphones shouldn't really be called smartphones
cause most of them aren't really used as one !

[devdanke]

Thanks for the interesting article. I think it would be even better if the article showed smartphone market share pie charts for this and last year. (It would be like adding two thousand words in a fraction of the space;-)

[AppleSuxLeo]

NEW YORK (AP) - Shares of handset maker Palm Inc. charged up 7.5 percent in premarket trading Friday after an analyst upgraded the company, saying its new operating system has boosted the company's potential to catch up with smartphone industry leaders Apple Inc. and Research in Motion Ltd.

"Rather than a 'one product Hail Mary,' we see webOS as a platform spawning a family of devices addressing a broader market opportunity," wrote RBC Capital Markets equity analyst Mike Abramsky. He upgraded the Sunnyvale, Calif.-based Treo maker to "Outperform" from "Sector Perform" and raised his target price on the stock to $12 from $5.