Q3 smartphone stats now available, Symbian slipping, but still ahead of iOS

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Smartphone sales statistics are now out for Q3, 2011, thanks to Gartner. Sales of Symbian-powered smartphones in the quarter were down 10 million from last year's total, at just under 20 million, but still notably higher than sales of Apple's high profile iOS devices. Sales of Android-powered devices were the strongest, at just over 60 million in the quarter. Some quotes, comment and a table below.

From the press release:

Smartphone sales to end users reached 115 million units in the third quarter of 2011, up 42 percent from the third quarter of 2010. Sequentially, smartphone sales slowed to 7 percent growth from the second quarter of 2011 to the third quarter of 2011. Smartphone sales accounted for 26 percent of all mobile phone sales, growing only marginally from 25 percent in the previous quarter.

"Strong smartphone growth in China and Russia helped increase overall volumes in the quarter, but demand for smartphones stalled in advanced markets such as Western Europe and the U.S. as many users waited for new flagship devices featuring new versions of the key operating systems," said Roberta Cozza, principal research analyst at Gartner. "Slowdowns also occurred in Latin America and the Middle East and Africa."

Samsung became the No. 1 smartphone manufacturer worldwide as sales to end users tripled year over year to reach 24 million; sell in was high as the channel built inventory. Samsung was the No. 1 smartphone manufacturer for the first time, ahead of Nokia in Western Europe and Asia. Gartner attributes this to the strong performance of Samsung's Galaxy smartphones, which now cover a broad range of prices, and a weaker competitive market.

Worldwide Smartphone Sales to End Users by Operating System in 3Q11 (Thousands of Units)

 

Operating System

3Q11

 Units

3Q11 Market Share (%)

3Q10

 Units

3Q10 Market Share (%)

Android

60,490.4

52.5

20,544.0

25.3

Symbian

19,500.1

16.9

29,480.1

36.3

iOS

17,295.3

15.0

13,484.4

16.6

Research In Motion

12,701.1

11.0

12,508.3

15.4

Bada

2,478.5

2.2

920.6

1.1

Microsoft

1,701.9

1.5

2,203.9

2.7

Others

1,018.1

0.9

1,991.3

2.5

Total

115,185.4

100

   81,132.6

100

The ful commercial report, for corporate use, is at http://www.gartner.com/resId=1847315.

The slide in Symbian-powered shipments year on year was expected, of course, given the announcement that the OS has a shelf life, the subsequent de-emphasis in the sales channel and given the relative lack of investment in Symbian by some of the biggest third party application developers.

Having said that, in a quarter where we had no significant new Symbian-powered smartphones launched and where we were still waiting for Symbian Belle to make a difference, 20 million smartphones sold is still a substantial number. Yes, Apple makes vastly more profit on its 17 million iPhones, but the fact that more Symbian phones get sold each day across the world than iPhones is still liable to raise an eyebrow around the tech-savvy water-cooler.

Quarter 4, 2011 will be stronger for Apple and hopefully also for Nokia/Symbian, with the iPhone 4S and Symbian Belle handset sales respectively.