Sunday, November 21, 2010

Worldwide Smartphone Sales Projections for 2011

Gartner reports record smartphone sales, thanks to Android, Symbian (and to a lesser extent, Apple).

Smartphone sales doubled in the third quarter to 81 million units, up from 41 million in Q3 2009, according to data released by tech industry research firm Gartner.

Contained in their data were three fascinating trends:
  1. The market is expanding dramatically.
  2. All platforms experienced increased sales
  3. However, all of the dominant players lost significant marketshare to Android.
Intrigued by these numbers, we compiled our own sales projections for Q3 2011, with comments below.

Worldwide Smartphone Sales to End Users
Sorted by Operating System, Showing Q3 Sales
Q3 2009Q3 2010Our Q3 2011 Projections
CompanyUnitsMarket ShareUnitsMarket ShareUnitsMarket Share
Android1,424.503.47%20,500.0025.46%45,000.0037.82%
Symbian18,314.8044.57%29,480.1036.61%35,000.0029.41%
iOS7,040.4017.13%13,484.4016.74%18,000.0015.13%
RiM8,522.7020.74%11,908.3014.79%10,000.008.40%
Palm/Other612.501.49%1,214.801.51%5,000.004.20%
Windows3,259.907.93%2,247.902.79%5,000.004.20%
Linux1,918.504.67%1,697.002.11%1,000.000.84%
Total41,093.30100.00%80,532.50100.00%119,000.00100.00%

A few administrative things first. The yellow and blue sections are the exact 2009/2010 numbers shown in the Gartner report. From there, the grey section contains our projections.  We used round numbers for simplicity, and greyed and italicized the text to ensure it was obvious these were merely projections. Now some commentary on how these numbers were contrived.

Most of this is inferred based on the sentiments of our own interactions with our friends, work collegues, family, mixed with the sentiments of the industry as a whole.  There is not a lot of concrete science in these projections, so take them with a grain of salt.

1 comment:

  1. Great post.

    I forsee a future where non Android manufacturers will become the Betamax of the mobile industry.

    Other tidbits to think of...
    Dell plans to replace 25000 BBs with it's own smartphone to save $$... JP Morgan is testing Iphones. RIM users love BBM, but recent Canadian Business Magazine article mentions a new application called Kik has had explosive growth. So much growth that on Nov 12 they kicked Kik out of the BB app store!

    Also, to the Gartner researchers...Android is linux isn't it?

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