For the past three years, the smartphone market has been battling it out very fiercely. And its that time of the year when four big analyst houses (IDC, Gartner, Strategy Analytics and Canalys) are out with their report containing their total market size numbers. Tomi T Ahonen, as always, has used their average as his ‘official total’ and then fit the best possible fit, of the biggest manufacturers, operating systems etc to get the Top 10 market shares. He reports on the installed base, and for every quarter, he reports individually for the manufacturers, how they’re doing in the market share wars. He begins with the top numbers.
Top 10 biggest smartphone manufacturers BY UNIT SALES IN Q3 2012
| Rank | Manufacturer | Units | Market Share | Share in Q2 2012 |
| 1 | Samsung | 56.2 M | 32.8% | 32.9% |
| 2 | Apple | 26.9 M | 15.7% | 17.0% |
| 3 | Huawei | 16.0 M | 9.3% | 4.6% |
| 4 | Sony | 8.8 M | 5.1% | 4.9% |
| 5 | ZTE | 8.0 M | 4.7% | 5.2% |
| 6 | HTC | 7.8 M | 4.6% | 5.8% |
| 7 | RIM | 7.4 M | 4.3% | 5.1% |
| 8 | LG | 7.2 M | 4.2% | 4.2% |
| 9 | Lenovo | 7.0 M | 4.1% | 3.9% |
| 10 | Nokia | 6.3 M | 3.7% | 6.7% |
| others | 19.8 M | 11.6% | 7.3% | |
| Total | 171.4M |
Source: TomiAhonen Consulting Estimates November 14, 2012 from vendor data and other sources
The first thing which comes out is Moto-Moto falls out of the top 10. Google smartphones have been too shown the exit gate. And guess what, who jumps in to replace it? Lenovo with its LePhone. Till now these phones were only sold in China but Lenovo is now eagerly expanding their phones in countries like India.
Another significant point is Nokia tumbling down from 3rd place to 10th. That’s not all, it is also facing expulsion from the Top 10 as well. Another Chinese smartphone maker, Yulong, which sells smartphones under the Coolpad brand, might topple Nokia in Q4. The top seems somewhat settled with Samsung ruling the group and Apple securing the second place. Huawei jumped to the third place and Sony after making profit from its smartphones segment is ranked fourth.
The next chart gives out figures of the installed base of smartphone by operating systems:
Installed base of smartphones BY OPERATING SYSTEM as of Q3 2012
| Rank | OS | Units | Market Share | Share in Q2 2012 |
| 1 | Android | 559 M | 48% | 41% |
| 2 | iOS | 217 M | 19% | 19% |
| 3 | Symbian | 213 M | 18% | 25% |
| 4 | BlackBerry | 109 M | 9% | 10% |
| 5 | bada | 24 M | 2% | 2% |
| 6 | Windows Phone | 17 M | 1% | 1% |
| 7 | Windows Mobile | 10 M | 1% | 1% |
| 8 | others | 17 M | 1% | 2% |
| Total | 1166 M |
Source: TomiAhonen Consulting Estimates November 14, 2012 from vendor data and other sources
The total count of smartphones in use is nearly 1.2 Billion and growing fast, we’ll soon have more smartphones in use. The only major change this chart shows that Symbian is now passed by iOS in installed base globally of smartphones. Nokia’s Symbian operating system which was dumped in favor of Microsoft in early 2011, remained one of the leading global smartphone operating system until recently. The chart shows a very thin difference between iOS and Symbian. And it shows that Apple iOS is slowly rising as a dominant smartphone platform. Microsoft is also is also gaining consistently gain installed base share.
To go through the detailed report, click here.
