ABI Research is out with a new report talking about smartphone shippments. From their press release, we learn that the market continued to build on the strong fourth quarter of 2009 in the first three months of 2010. ABI’s data suggests that a little more than 55 million smartphones were shipped during the period, which actually is a million less than the previous quarter. However, that’s still impressive considering the seasonal sales cycles.
The company’s senior analyst Michael Morgan said: “Normally we would see a much greater decline in shipments in the first quarter; the fact that the drop was so relatively small highlights the continuing dynamic growth of the smartphone market.”
Much of the growth came from the markets previously little penetrated by expensive smartphones.
Nokia was pointed as a great examples with their shipments rising QoQ from 20.8 million to 21.5 million, largely on the strength of the new models in the “C” and “X” series. Morgan noted that it was not the “iPhone-killers” that helped the Finnish company grab market share, but lower-end devices that deliver “satisfying social networking and other basic smartphone experiences.”
As for the iPhone shipments, they also rose slightly from 8.7 to 8.8 million, partly on the back of strong performance in markets such as Japan and China…
And you can get additional information from ABI Research’s website.