Even though Apple (NASDAQ:AAPL) enjoyed record phone shipments in its latest quarter, that wasn't enough to keep them in the No. 4 position globally, or move them up, as they were overtaken by Chinese vendor ZTE, which jumped ahead of them.
Apple continues to do well in mature markets, especially North America and Europe. They shipped 16.2 million units in the fourth quarter, over 2 million more than the 14.1 million it shipped in the third quarter.
Data recently released from an IDC report called "Worldwide Quarterly Mobile Phone Tracker," China's ZTE shipped 16.8 million units to leap over Apple, the first time they made the top five in global mobile phone shipments. That gave them a 4.2 percent market share as well.
Ramon Llamas, senior research analyst with IDC's Mobile Devices Technology and Trends team, said, "Change-up among the number four and five vendors could be a regular occurrence this year. Motorola, Research In Motion, and Sony Ericsson - all vendors with a tight focus on the fast-growing smartphone market who had ranked among the top five worldwide vendors during 2010 - are well within striking distance to move back into the top five list."
Along with its usual customer base in Latin America and Africa, along with other emerging markets, ZTE also gained inroads into the American market and Western Europe, offering more hefty smartphones to the market. In the past they gained market share primarily through entry-level and medium-range phones.
The immediate future for the mobile phone market is the growing demand for smartphones, concluded the report.
Taken together, vendors around the world shipped 401.4 million units in the fourth quarter, a big jump from the 340.5 million shipped in the same quarter last year. An increase of 17.9 percent. For the entirety of 2010, global shipments soared from 1.17 billion to 1.39 billion.
For Apple, their market share dropped to 4.0 percent from 4.1 percent in the previous quarter.
Apple closed Friday at $336.10, falling $7.11, or 2.07 percent.
No comments:
Post a Comment