Apple iPhone Doubles Marketshare In Smartphone Segment

One of the most striking conclusions in the report about Worldwide mobile phone sales that it published a few days ago, is the surge in sales of Apple's iPhone in the smartphone category.

Of all the major smartphone manufacturers, Apple had the biggest jump in sales, reaching nearly 4 million units sold for the first quarter of 2009 alone. This represent a rise of 128 percent in sales and leaves the company with a 10.8 percent share of the market.

This firmly keeps Apple in third place behind Nokia and Research in Motion at 15 million and 7.2 million units sold respectively with HTC taking fourth place with nearly 2 million handsets flogged. Surprisingly, at the fifth place is Fujitsu whose handsets have only been sold in Asia it seems.

The total number of smartphones sold in Q1 2009 increased from 32.3 million to 36.4 million while the share of other smartphone manufacturers decreased from 9.1 million to 6.9 million as people choose reputation over price.

Overall, the share of smartphones reached 13.53 percent of the total number of mobile phones sold, up from 10.98 percent. Interestingly, neither Samsung nor LG appeared in the smartphone sales figures probably due to the way Gartner identifies a smartphone.

Should Apple maintain its growth, it will certainly smash the 6 million units sold for Q2 2009 and be on target to reach 20 million units for 2009.

.