According to Gartner the global sales of Smart phone touched a whopping 38% in the fourth quarter. The market leader as per sales figure for 2012 was Samsung in both smartphone and feature phone segment. The year saw a great increment in the sales of smart phone but an overall average of saw a slide of 1.7 percent from the previous year. The demand for feature phone was lackluster but on the other hand the sale of smart phone touched a figure of 207.7 million in fourth quarter that is a 38 percent increment.

 

Samsung gained the first position by selling 205.7 million smartphones in 2012, with 64.5 million sold in the fourth quarter whereas Apple came second by selling 130 million smartphones 2012 with 43.5 million sold in the fourth quarter. Samsung and Apple saw a growth of 85 percent and 22.6 percent respectively in the fourth quarter over the fourth quarter of 2011. Android platform was the biggest gainer with 42.5 percent global share. Though Samsung did not get any stiff competition from other brands in 2013 but all this will change by 2013 when the company will see increasing competition from rival brand like Sony and Nokia.

 

Nokia once the global leader in Smartphone sales saw its biggest decline in 2012 with 53.6 percent slide over 2011. Though Nokia sold 39.3 million smartphone phones which accounts for 12 percent of its overall sales the overall performance was not encouraging. Nokia had some success with its fourth quarter sales, its Asha line of feature phones and Lumia series of Windows phone 8 was a savior that gave some good numbers. But overall its market share stood at 18 percent which is the lowest for Nokia. Huawei was ranked number 3 by Gartner with a sale of 27 million Smartphone in the fourth quarter of 2012, this is 74 percent increase from the previous year’s fourth quarter.

 

The Android is market leader with 69.7 percent of the global market share followed by iOS at 21 percent, Blackberry with 3.5 percent and Windows Phone at 3 percent.