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A billion smartphones were sold last year, says IDC

Pile of smart phones
Image: theguardian.com

A billion smartphones were sold in 2013, according to IDC data, the first time the milestone has been hit. The number represents one smartphone sale for every seventh man, woman and child on the planet.

IDC says that price has been the main driver for growth, putting yesterday’s market share stats into perspective.

Markets like China and India are quickly moving toward a point where sub-$150 smartphones are the majority of shipments

Report: Samsung and Apple dominate Q4 with 51 percent of global smartphone market

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Screen Shot 2013-01-25 at 9.01.51 AM

Q4 2012 estimates from Strategy Analytics

While Samsung has conveniently left specific smartphone sales numbers out of its Q4 earnings release yesterday (as usual), today we get a look at the latest estimates for the quarter coming from research firms Strategy Analytics and IDC.

We know that Apple sold 47.8 million iPhones during the quarter, and today both research firms put Samsung just over 63 million units for Q4 2012. That means Samsung was able to capture 29 percent of the market last quarter (up from 36.2 million units and 22.5-percent of the market in the year ago quarter). Apple is of course a close second among the top five smartphone vendors with 21.8-percent—down slightly from the 23 percent it held in the same quarter last year. In Q4 2011, Apple and Samsung were neck and neck at about 23 percent of the market each.

The increasing market share for Apple, and especially Samsung, over the past year comes at the expense of Nokia. It experienced a drop from 16 percent to 5 percent of the market during the past year. 
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Samsung’s Galaxy Note II hits 3M in sales since launch

Samsung announced today that it sold roughly 3 million Galaxy Note IIs since the phablet launched over a month ago.

The company specified to the Associates Press (via USA Today) that it took just 37 days to hit the sales figure:

The South Korean firm is pinning its hope on the Note II and the S III to maintain its market lead during the crucial fourth-quarter holiday season, when a number of new gadgets are vying for attention from consumers in the crowded market.

A new report by IDC gives support to Samsung’s unverified claims: the research firm revealed Samsung sat at No. 1 in terms of the global smartphone market for Q3 2012 with 56.3 million sales—doubling Apple’s 26.9 million in iPhone sales.


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IDC: Android is now on 3 out of every 4 smartphones sold

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IDC is out with its latest report that covers the top six smartphone operating systems by shipments and market share during Q3 2012. In the study, IDC found Android on nearly 75 percent of all smartphones shipped during the quarter, giving Android 136 million units of the 181.1 million total smartphones shipped during Q3 2012. That accounts for 91.5-percent year-over-year growth, beating out 57.3- percent year-over-year growth for Apple, and an average market growth of 46.4-percent. Apple shipped 26.9 million iPhones, in comparison, giving the company 14.9-percent of the market in the third quarter. Samsung is once again the top Android vendor:

Android, having topped the 100 million unit mark last quarter, reached a new record level in a single quarter. By comparison, Android’s total volumes for the quarter were greater than the total number of smartphones shipped in 2007, the year that Android was officially announced. Samsung once again led all vendors in this space, but saw its market share decline as numerous smaller vendors increased their production.

iOS was a distant second place to Android, but was the only other mobile operating system to amass double-digit market share for the quarter. The late quarter launch of the iPhone 5 and lower prices on older models prevented total shipment volumes from slipping to 3Q11 levels. But without a splashy new OS-driven feature like Siri in 2011 and FaceTime in 2010, the iPhone 5 relied on its larger, but not wider, screen and LTE connectivity to drive growth.

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IDC: Samsung and ASUS are gaining, but iPad still owns over 2/3rds of the tablet market

According to the latest data from IDC, four of the top five worldwide vendors eyed shipment increases year-over-year and solid growth in Q2 2012.

Global tablet shipments hit 25 million units, with a 66.2-percent year-over-year increase, while Apple’s iPad set a shipment record in Q2 2012 by jumping from 11.8 million units shipped in Q1 2012 to 17 million.

Samsung sits at second place with 2.4 million units shipped, which is an increase from 1.1 million units in Q2 2011, and ASUS notably almost tripled its amount of units shipped from a year ago. Interestingly, shipments of the Google/ASUS-branded Nexus 7 are not a part of these totals.

Get the full breakdown at IDC.

This article is cross-posted at 9to5Mac.


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