Samsung sold more than 97 million mobile phones in the third
quarter, besting Apple's (NASDAQ:
AAPL
) iPhone by more than 74 million units. According to Gartner
(NYSE:
IT
), nearly
428 million mobile phones
were sold during the quarter. Approximately 23.5 million of those
phones were manufactured by Apple -- 97.9 million were made by
Samsung.
To be fair, these totals include all mobile phones, not just
smartphones. If one were to eliminate the so-called feature
phones (standard devices that do not contain any of the high-end
elements, such as apps and Web surfing, which are present in
smartphones), Samsung's numbers would not be nearly as high. But
when Apple entered the cellular device industry, it chose to
develop a high-end product. The price may have fallen for older
models, but the iPhone is still an expensive device with hefty
carrier fees.
Samsung has taken a different approach. The South Korean
manufacturer produces a plethora of phones for a wide variety of
markets all over the world. On its
U.S. website
, consumers will find
178 different phones
for AT&T (NYSE:
T
), Verizon (NYSE:
VZ
), Sprint (NYSE:
S
), T-Mobile, U.S. Cellular and other carriers. On
Apple.com
, consumers will see three phones for only three carriers.
Pre-paid service companies, such as Virgin Mobile and Leap
Wireless' (NASDAQ:
LEAP
) Cricket Communications, also offer the iPhone. But Apple's
reach is nowhere near that of its competitors, particularly
Samsung.
"After two consecutive quarter[s] of decline in mobile phone
sales, demand has improved in both mature and emerging markets as
sales increased sequentially," Anshul Gupta, principal research
analyst at Gartner, said in a
company release
. "In China, sales of mobile phones grew driven by sales of
smartphones, while demand of feature phones remained weak. In
mature markets, we finally saw replacement sales pick up with the
launch of new devices in the quarter."
While Apple and Samsung will continue competing for as long as
the two are in business, it seems that their patent dispute will
go on as well. Earlier today, a Samsung executive reportedly said
that the company has
no plans to negotiate
a deal similar to the one
announced
by HTC.
Nokia (NYSE:
NOK
) still ranks second in overall mobile phone sales, moving 82
million units worldwide. But the company dropped to seventh place
(down from third) in smartphone sales. This decline occurred
before the arrival of the
highly anticipated Lumia 920
, which was released this month. The Lumia 920 uses Microsoft's
(NASDAQ:
MSFT
) brand-new mobile phone platform, Windows Phone 8.
During the third quarter, more than 122 million Android
smartphones were sold worldwide. iOS sales were limited by he
number of new iPhone users since it is not available on any other
mobile platform. (Gartner's research focused exclusively on
phones; tablets and other devices were excluded.) Thus, new iOS
phone sales were the same as new iPhone sales -- 23.5
million.
Research In Motion's (NASDAQ:
RIMM
) BlackBerry OS was adopted by 8.9 million new users, followed by
Bada (five million new users) and Symbian (4.4 million). Windows
Phone came in last place with just four million new users. These
sales could be attributed to anticipation for Windows Phone 8,
which shipped worldwide on October 26. Consumers may have been
waiting to purchase a phone until the new OS was released.
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@LouisBedigianBZ
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