HTC’s Market Ranking Drops One Notch in Q4, 2011

Taipei, Feb. 17, 2012 (CENS)--HTC Corp. dropped one spot in the fourth quarter of 2011 to the eighth place on world top-9 mobile phone vendor list as a result of disappointing sales of high-end products, according to market research firm Gartner Inc.

The Taiwan-based HTC held a 2.3% share of the global market in the fourth quarter of 2011 by shipping 10.83 million smartphones worldwide, compared with a 2.7% market share and shipment of 12.09 million phones a quarter earlier.

Nokia retained No.1 title by shipping 111 million units in the fourth quarter, up from 105 million in the third quarter; but the firm’s global market share edged down to 23.4% from 23.9 percent in the meantime.

Samsung still held No.2 place by shipping 92.6 million phones for a 19.4% market share in the fourth quarter of 2011, increasing from 78.6 million phones it shipped a quarter earlier for a 17.8% market share.

Apple and ZTE were No.3 and No.4 players last quarter, respectively, on the list, surpassing LG, which dropped to the fifth place.

Apple bagged 7.4% of the market last quarter with 35.35 million phones shipped, a huge gain from a 3.9% market share and 17.29 million phones shipped a quarter earlier. Gartner ascribed Apple’s market gain mostly to the popularity of its high-performance smartphones.

Apple iPhone 4S sales hit record high last quarter, boosting the market share of iOS to 23.8%, a gain of 8.8 percentage points from a quarter earlier. In the meantime, Android OS sank 1.6 percentage points to a share of 50.9% while Symbian OS lost 5.2 percentage points to 11.7%.

ZTE, like No. 6 player Huawei, gained a spot on the list because of robust sales of low-priced phones. ZTE saw its market share increase to 4% last quarter from 3.2% a quarter earlier by shipping 18.9 million phones. Huawei shipped 13.96 million phones last quarter, securing it with a market share of 2.9%. In the third quarter, it had 2.4% of market share with shipments of 10.66 million phones.

Research In Motion (RIM) was No. 7 vendor and Motorola was the No.9.

According to Gartner, a total of 476 million mobile phones were shipped in the fourth quarter of 2011, up 5.4% year on year. Smartphone shipments alone soared approximately 30% from a quarter earlier and 47.3% from the same quarter of 2010 thanks to brisk sales of iPhone 4S.

Gartner estimated the growth of 2012 global market for mobile phones will be four percentage points below 2011’s increase. Based on the rate, an estimated 1.89 billion phones would be shipped by the end of this year, up from last year’s 1.77 billion phones.