Gartner has released a comprehensive report on the list of smartphone platforms sale of mobile phones worldwide. In its reports, gartner has enlisted the iPhone at number three, right behind Nokia's Symbian OS and the RIM software used in Blackberry devices. More importantly, the report reveals that Apple's unit share has more than doubled in the last year, from 11.4 million units in 2008 to more than 24 million in 2009.
Gartner claims iPhone sales made up 14 percent of the smartphone market last year to WinMo's 9 percent, but that still puts Apple behind the other two leaders in the market: BlackBerry manufacturer RIM in third place with 20 percent, Finnish firm Nokia still ahead with a mighty 47 percent.
It's an influential stat when you consider that iPhone is just one handset confronting to the leagues that run WinMo software, but Apple still has some way to go if it wants to reach the zenith.
Android is also on the list, and while it's not quite competing with iPhone yet, that brand experienced even greater growth, from less than a million phones in 2008 up to almost 7 million in 2009. And perhaps the most interesting takeaway is that while Symbian encountered a nearly 10% drop in market share, both its and RIM's totals actually climbed up. While cellphone sales at large have dropped, smartphone sales have jumped across the board. It clearly shows that more people are doing more things with their cell phones than just the usual calling.
According to Gartner's principal research analyst Roberta Cozza, "Android's fourth-quarter growth should continue, but some suppliers had "expressed growing concern about Google's intentions in the mobile market." If this led them to transform their product strategies, "this might slow-down Android's growth in 2010."
