Smartphone sales didn’t cool in the last last quarter. That’s according to the newest data published this week by the folks at Gartner.
Gartner’s quarterly report for worldwide mobile device sales by vendor and OS for the third quarter points to some interesting developments for this period .
Despite an overall 3% decline in mobile phone sales, the smartphone category reached 169.2 million units in Q3, which is a 47% increase from the year-ago quarter.
Of course, while some things change, other things remain the same. For Q3, Apple and Samsung remained the top smartphone vendors, jointly taking 46.5% of the market.
“After two consecutive quarter of decline in mobile phone sales, demand has improved in both mature and emerging markets as sales increased sequentially,” said Anshul Gupta, principal research analyst at Gartner. “In China, sales of mobile phones grew driven by sales of smartphones, while demand of feature phones remained weak. In mature markets, we finally saw replacement sales pick up with the launch of new devices in the quarter.”
So what can the industry expect for holiday sales?
While seasonality in the fourth quarter of 2012 will help end-of-year mobile phone sales to end users, Gartner analysts said that “there will be a lower-than-usual boost from the holiday season.” The reason? “Consumers are either cautious with their spending or finding new gadgets like tablets, as more attractive presents.”
