Apple Takes Biggest Bite of Smart Phone Sales

The smart phone market was dominated by one company last year, with sales of the Apple iPhones overtaking those of Windows Mobile, claimed Gartner Research. However, Symbian phones and Research in Motion's Blackberry handsets still retain their lead, the research company reported. In 2009, the global figure for the sale of Symbian handsets stood at 80.9 million, up from 72.9 million a year earlier. Yet, due to the fast rising market overall for smart phones (172.4 million sold in 2009 and 139.3 million in 2008), Symbian's market share fell to 46.9%, meanwhile, second-placed RIM's market share rose to 19.9% from 16.6% in 2008.

Despite the continued success of both the Blackberry and the multitude of Symbian-backed phones, all eyes were fixed on the inexorable rise of Apple's iPhone last year and its impressive sales figures. In 2009 the pc-turned-mobile company sold 24.9 million of its iconic handsets, up from a mere 11.4 million in 2008. Apple's bite of the market increased to 11.4% in 2009.

Gartner reported less encouraging news for Microsoft and its mobile operating system which fell to fourth place in the market for smart phones, its market share falling to 8.7% down from 11.8% the year before. The research company noted that the launch of a new mobile platform, Windows Phones 7 Series, should make it more competitive, though this will not affect sales figures until later this year.

Android was only the sixth largest smart phone platform in 2009, with a market share of 3.9%. However, Gartner believes that too will change soon with Android sales beginning to pick up noticeably in the fourth quarter of 2009 - four million out of a total 6.8 million units were sold during the last three months of 2009.

Despite the boom in sales of smart phones, the overall mobile market fared badly in 2009, with total global sales slipping by 1% to 1.2 billion units, Gartner reported.