New numbers from the bean counters at IDC have been released and they show that finally, after the first smartphone, the Nokia 7650, was introduced in Q2 2002, the smartphone category has ended the reign of the dumbphone. The defeat wasn’t really a landslide, 21.8 million smartphones versus 20.4 million million dumbphones that shipped in Q2 2011, but it’s a historic event since we’ve reached the end of an era and are about to enter an age of enlightenment thanks to more and more people have access to the world’s information from a piece of metal and plastic that’s always within arm’s length. Now on to the nitty gritty details, who shipped the most smartphones? If you’re guessing Nokia, you’re wrong. The title goes to Samsung, who was responsible 33% of all smarpthones shipped in Q2 of this year. Nokia comes in second at 21%, Apple in third at 11%, and HTC and RIM tie for fourth with 7% each. Note that 3 out of the top 5 handset makers in Europe don’t even sell dumbphones!
The numbers go on to say that 48.5% of those 21.8 million smartphones run Android, which is a figure that’s difficult to wrap your head around when you realize that Android is soon going to turn 3 years old. Google’s operating system has blown Symbian out of the water in Western Europe, and Samsung’s wide portfolio of Android devices that span nearly every point has proven to be an amazing success.
The question on our minds is now when will dumbphones officially die in this part of the world? It took 9 years to hit 50%, so will it take just half that to capture the other 50%? That would mean every mobile phone purchased during the 2015 holiday shopping season, more blandly called Q4, would have to be a smartphone. That’s not too far off when you think about it.
We’ll be looking forward to the iPhone 9.