Apple surpassed Motorola and Sony in handset sales

Table 1
Worldwide Mobile Device Sales to End Users in 2010 (Thousands of Units)

Source: Gartner (February 2011)

Today Gartner revealed the results of another research, where it was found that Apple's achievements in 2010 had led to the situation when the company's competitors experienced reduced sales and eventually lost significant market shares.

In numbers 1.6 billion mobile devices were sold last year worldwide. Smartphone sales saw a 72% increase. Apple sold 46.6M iPhones and became No. 5 mobile phone maker in the world. The company's share on the mobile phone market was 2.9%, which is 0.8% more than in 2009, when 24.9M iPhone were sold. Apple's competitors Motorola and Sony Ericsson, on the contrary, saw year-over-year decrease in sales, which can be seen on the table above.

Research vice president at Gartner Carolina Milanesi noted that besides Apple only RIM had seen year over year growth on the market of mobile devices from 2.8% in 2009 to 3% in 2010.

"Strong smartphone sales in the fourth quarter of 2010 pushed Apple and Research In Motion (RIM) up in our 2010 worldwide ranking of mobile device manufacturers to the No. 5 and No. 4 positions, respectively, displacing Sony Ericsson and Motorola. Nokia and LG saw their market share erode in 2010 as they came under increasing pressure to refine their smartphone strategies."

Gartner found that Apple's growth in 2009 is largely explained by the company's world expansion. Now iPhone is available through 185 careers all over the world.

Market share of Apple's iOS was equal to 14.4% in 2009 and grew to 15.7% in 2010, thus making the company ranked fourth in the chart of best-selling mobile platforms. Research in Motion got third place with its 16% market share. Google's Android OS became second with its 888.8% year-over-year growth and achieved 22.7% of the market. Symbian remained the top mobile OS with its 37.6% market share.

Worldwide Smartphone Sales to End Users by Operating System in 2010 (Thousands of Units)

Source: Gartner (February 2011)

The growing popularity of Android and the fact that it outpaces Apple's iOS have been already reported by Canalys and comScore. However, Android is a platform distributed by several device manufacturers, while Apple both develops iOS and produces iPhones, and according to IDC, that's what makes this company the second-largest smartphone maker worldwide.