Date: 04/05/2010

Global smart phone shipments in 1st quarter 2010 records highest growth rate

Canalys has reported, the smart phone volumes continued their climb in Q1 2010 as volumes reached 55.2 million a growth of 67% year-on-year, which is the highest growth rate seen since the end of 2007. Nokia continues to lead the market, with a new smart phone volume of 21.4 million units shipped followed by RIM. The Apple is next in the list whose market shares are gaining faster climbing from 11% a year ago to 16% in Q1 2010.

Other notable performers with triple-digit growth among the top 10 vendors were Sony Ericsson and Palm, which saw 292% and 129% year-on-year growth respectively.

Another market researcher ABI in it latest study has reported mobile phones with 3G are selling hot in the market and they are pushing the phones with 2G to the darker side.

"Despite ash clouds over Europe, handset shipments globally for 1Q-2010 powered ahead to 303 million, up 19% Year-on-Year," says Jake Saunders, VP for Forecasting at ABI Research. "This bodes well for 2010 as a whole: shipments could well reach 1.3 billion. It is also notable that 3G handset shipments eclipsed 2G handset shipments."