The global mobile phone market fell 2 percent year-on-year to 419.1 million units in the first quarter of this year, with Samsung Electronics Co leading the market with shipments of 86.57 million units, according to the latest Gartner Inc report, released yesterday.
Taiwan’s HTC Corp (宏達電), however, saw its global market share fall to 1.8 percent in the first quarter to rank 10th largest in the world, with shipments of 7.7 million phones. A year ago, it ranked the 7th largest with a market share of 2.2 percent, the research firm said.
The 2-percent sales decline in the first quarter, traditionally the strongest quarter in Asia driven by Lunar New Year buying sprees, represented the first fall since the second quarter of 2009, according to the report.
“Global sales of mobile devices declined more than expected due to a slowdown in demand from the Asia-Pacific region,” Anshul Gupta, a principal research analyst at Gartner, said in a statement.
Gupta said that the first-quarter result reflected a lack of new product launches from leading manufacturers, adding that it was also an indication that “users delayed upgrades in the hope of better smartphone deals arriving later in the year.”
Annette Zimmermann, a principal research analyst at Gartner, said the first-quarter data were yet another sign of a cautious outlook for the remainder of the year, despite the anticipated launches of new products powered either by Google Inc’s Android, Microsoft Corp’s Windows Phone operating system or Apple’s iOS platform.
“As we are starting to update our market forecast, we feel a downward adjustment to our 2012 figures, in the range of 20 million units, is unavoidable,” Zimmermann said in the statement.
In the first three months, Samsung saw its handset sales increase 25.9 percent from the prior year and its market share rise to 20.7 percent from 16.1 percent the year before, while Nokia Corp slipped to second place with sales of 83.16 million units in the quarter and saw its market share fall to 19.8 percent from 25.1 percent a year earlier, the report showed.
Prior to the first quarter of this year, Nokia had held the No. 1 spot since 1998, according to Gartner.
Apple Inc came third with sales of 33.12 million units and a 7.9 percent global market share with the iPhone maker followed by China’s ZTE Corp (中興) with sales of 17.44 million units and a 4.2 percent market share. South Korea’s LG Electronics Inc, which sold 14.72 million phones in the first quarter had a 3.5 percent market share, Gartner’s report said.
In terms of smartphones, total sales rose 44.7 percent to 144.4 million units in the first quarter from a year earlier with Samsung and Apple widening their lead over the No. 3 Nokia, the report said.
BlackBerry maker Research In Motion Ltd saw its share of the smartphone market slashed almost in half to 6.9 percent to rank the fourth-largest in the quarter, while the fifth-placed HTC saw its share of the global smartphone market dropped to 5.3 percent from 9.3 percent a year ago, according to Gartner.
Smartphones powered by Google's Android software totaled 81.07 million units and accounted for 56 percent of the global market in the first quarer, while the iPhone operating system was the next most popular with 33.12 million units and 22.9 percent market share, Gartner said.
This story has been updated since it was first published.
China has claimed a breakthrough in developing homegrown chipmaking equipment, an important step in overcoming US sanctions designed to thwart Beijing’s semiconductor goals. State-linked organizations are advised to use a new laser-based immersion lithography machine with a resolution of 65 nanometers or better, the Chinese Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT) said in an announcement this month. Although the note does not specify the supplier, the spec marks a significant step up from the previous most advanced indigenous equipment — developed by Shanghai Micro Electronics Equipment Group Co (SMEE, 上海微電子) — which stood at about 90 nanometers. MIIT’s claimed advances last
ISSUES: Gogoro has been struggling with ballooning losses and was recently embroiled in alleged subsidy fraud, using Chinese-made components instead of locally made parts Gogoro Inc (睿能創意), the nation’s biggest electric scooter maker, yesterday said that its chairman and CEO Horace Luke (陸學森) has resigned amid chronic losses and probes into the company’s alleged involvement in subsidy fraud. The board of directors nominated Reuntex Group (潤泰集團) general counsel Tamon Tseng (曾夢達) as the company’s new chairman, Gogoro said in a statement. Ruentex is Gogoro’s biggest stakeholder. Gogoro Taiwan general manager Henry Chiang (姜家煒) is to serve as acting CEO during the interim period, the statement said. Luke’s departure came as a bombshell yesterday. As a company founder, he has played a key role in pushing for the
EUROPE ON HOLD: Among a flurry of announcements, Intel said it would postpone new factories in Germany and Poland, but remains committed to its US expansion Intel Corp chief executive officer Pat Gelsinger has landed Amazon.com Inc’s Amazon Web Services (AWS) as a customer for the company’s manufacturing business, potentially bringing work to new plants under construction in the US and boosting his efforts to turn around the embattled chipmaker. Intel and AWS are to coinvest in a custom semiconductor for artificial intelligence computing — what is known as a fabric chip — in a “multiyear, multibillion-dollar framework,” Intel said in a statement on Monday. The work would rely on Intel’s 18A process, an advanced chipmaking technology. Intel shares rose more than 8 percent in late trading after the
GLOBAL ECONOMY: Policymakers have a choice of a small 25 basis-point cut or a bold cut of 50 basis points, which would help the labor market, but might reignite inflation The US Federal Reserve is gearing up to announce its first interest rate cut in more than four years on Wednesday, with policymakers expected to debate how big a move to make less than two months before the US presidential election. Senior officials at the US central bank including Fed Chairman Jerome Powell have in recent weeks indicated that a rate cut is coming this month, as inflation eases toward the bank’s long-term target of two percent, and the labor market continues to cool. The Fed, which has a dual mandate from the US Congress to act independently to ensure