Apple, RIM grow despite dismal cell phone market
A new report from Gartner says that despite the dismal economy and cell phone marketplace overall, smartphone sales are still growing, and that is especially true at Apple and Blackberry.
Even though sales in the overall cell phone market were down by 9.4 percent, according to a Gartner Group report, the sales of smart phones were up again by 12.4 percent on a year-to-year basis. The report says that 36.4 million smartphones sold in the quarter, once again showing a growing migration to the versatile new devices.
The big winners in the ranks of smartphone sellers were the iPhone and units from Blackberry/RIM. And, once again, the big loser was smartphone sales leader Nokia, whose product line may be getting a bit long in the tooth, especially at the top. The RIM phones are second to Nokia, while Apple appears to be continuing to close the gap between third and second. It is expected that iPhone sales will see a surge after the new models and operating system are introduced next month. Currently, RIM holds 19.9 percent of the market with all their smartphone models while Apple has 10.8 percent with just the iPhone 3G, according to a PC World story.
One item of note in the Gartner report is that services and applications are increasingly important on the smartphone side. Although Blackberry has opened their online store, the Apple App Store is far and away the leader in the area of available applications. That lead is expected to take a significant jump with the release of the new iPhone operating system in June and the new business and personal applications that release will engender.
Smartphone sales are continuing to grow even though there is a recession, according to Ben Wood, analyst at CCS Insight, and there are reasons for that. Subsidies are playing an important role, because they lower the cost of the devices for the consumers. Support for social networking at sites such as Facebook is driving some sales. And, says Wood, “People need a bit of sunshine in their life, and they might not afford a new car or a holiday, but they can afford a smartphone.”
It must also be said that the price differential between dumb phones and smart phones is narrowing. As more and more units are sold, prices continue to drop, as is true with all new technology. With more and more functionality coming in the form of apps and multifunction devices, it is clear that smartphones are the wave of the future, replacing basic cell phones just as small cell phones replaced the older bricks.
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