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Last month a number of research companies published their estimates for mobile phone shipments in 2012. Gartner is the latest to join in, noting that its figures showed total worldwide mobile phone sales dropping by 1.7% year-on-year to 1.75 billion units in 2012.
However, smartphone sales are increasing, with the final quarter of 2012 showing a 38.3% year-on-year increase to 207.7 million devices sold. This contrasts with feature phone sales, which were down 19.3% in Q4 2012 to 264.4 million units in the fourth quarter of 2012.
This year, Gartner expects 1.9 billion mobile phones will be sold to end users; almost a billion of these devices will be smartphones.
Samsung was the most popular manufacturer last year, both in terms of overall mobile phone sales and for smartphone sales. It sold 384.6 million mobile phones, of which 53.5% were smartphones. In 2011, just 28% of Samsung’s phone sales were smart devices. Apple’s total smartphone sales for 2012 reached 130 million.
Android was the most-chosen smartphone operating system, moving further ahead of Apple’s iOS and RIM.
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