Finns are still leading in absolute terms, but are falling quickly
It should take until the end of May for reliable figures on current smartphone sales to be available - but analysts are already trying to make forecasts based on the business figures of the various providers. The negative trend at Nokia is likely to continue, while Apple is gaining ground with the iPhone and RIM with the Blackberry, according to the British Guardian. Nokia estimates the total number of smartphones sold in the first quarter of 2011 at 92,3 million devices. That would mean rapid growth of around 70 percent. Nokia itself, however, was unable to increase its sales figures.
{jumi [plugins/content/jumi/newsgrafik.php]}Bad news for Nokia
With their estimates, the analysts at Nokia were already very close to the actual figures last year. The official figures from Gartner showed 54,3 million smartphones sold for the first quarter of last year, Nokia had calculated 52,6 million. If the forecast is again similarly accurate, that means bad news for Nokia. Although the company would still be at the top with a 26,2 percent market share in smartphones, it would be the big loser compared to its competitors from Apple and RIM.
In addition, the numbers suggest that Nokia's Symbian operating system has now been overtaken by Android. More and more providers are using at least some of the Google operating system. According to the forecasts, Blackberry manufacturer RIM can look forward to a growth of 30 percent, while Apple is the big winner with an increase from 8,4 million to 18,7 million units sold.
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