Apple gains another victory as the maker of the wildly popular iPhone just sneaked past Samsung to become the number one smartphone manufacturer. In the last quarter of December the Cupertino-based company moved 37 million handsets compared to Sammy’s 36.5 million, according to Strategy Analytics and IHS iSuppli.
Even though Samsung doesn’t specifically break out its smartphone sales – causing both firms to make estimates – it’s still hard to ignore how impressive these sales are. Smartphone sales are rising every year, which is something Strategy Analytics mentioned in its separate study. In a release, Strategy Analytics noted that the total number of handsets shipped last year, including both smartphones and simpler types of devices, rose by 14 percent, to 1.6 billion.
In that context, Apple came in with 6 percent of the global handset shipments in 2011, behind Nokia’s 26.9 percent and Samsung’s 21.1 percent. With growing numbers in the business of mobile devices it’ll be interesting to see how companies slug it out in the years to come.
[via Barron’s]