Global cellphone market growth slows in Q3 : Gartner

REUTERS: Cellphone market growth slowed sharply in the third quarter as sales of basic phone models shrank from a year ago and growth in the smartphone market cooled, research firm Gartner said on Tuesday.

Global sales of all mobile phones grew an annual 5.6 percent in the third quarter to 440.5 million phones, compared with 16.5 percent growth in the previous quarter.

Smartphone sales grew 42 percent from a year ago, compared with a 74 percent rise in the previous quarter and the more than 100 percent growth rates the market has seen over the last few years.

Gartner said growth in demand for smartphones slipped in advanced markets such as Western Europe and the United States as many users waited for new flagship devices, while slowdowns also occurred in Latin America and the Middle East and Africa.

Nokia remained the world’s largest cellphone vendor, but its market share dropped to 23.9 percent from 28.2 percent a year earlier, while rivals Samsung Electronics, LG Electronics and Apple closed the gap.

“The second quarter of 2011 was the low point for Nokia, and the third quarter brought signs of improvement,” Gartner said.

Nokia, left in the dust by Apple and Google in the booming smartphone market, last month introduced its Lumia models, the first it has developed using Microsoft’s Windows Phone platform, seen as the key to its future.

“Heavy marketing from both Nokia and Microsoft to push the new Lumia devices should bring more improvement in the fourth quarter of 2011. However, a true turnaround won’t take place until the second half of 2012,” the researcher said.

Microsoft’s share of the smartphone market almost halved in the quarter to just 1.5 percent, while Google’s Android saw its share more than doubling to 52.5 percent.

“Android benefited from more mass-market offerings, a weaker competitive environment and the lack of exciting new products on alternative operating systems such as Windows Phone 7 and RIM,” Gartner analyst Roberta Cozza said in a statement.