IDC released its quarterly cellphone shipment estimate, stating that the market grew by only 2.4 percent year over year, from 434.1 million to 444.5 million units. The smartphone market was solely responsible for the growth and compensated for a substantial drop in feature phone shipments. IDC said that smartphone shipments were 179.7 million units in Q3 2012, compared to 123.7 million units in Q3 2011.
Samsung leads the Smartphone market with 56.3 million units, representing a 31.3 percent market share. Apple came in with 26.9 million (15.0 percent), followed by RIM with 7.7 million (4.3 percent). ZTE and HTC complete the top 5 with 7.5 and 7.3 million units. Nokia is no longer listed among the top 5.
"Nokia's share losses have meant gains for competitors," said Kevin Restivo, senior research analyst with IDC. "The company's transition away from Symbian-powered smartphones to ones shipped with Windows Phone has left ample opportunity for rivals to steal share away from Nokia over the past 18 months. However, the smartphone market is still relatively nascent, which means there's room for multiple vendors and operating systems to flourish, including Nokia."
Among all shipped phones, Nokia is still the number 2 behind Samsung. Samsung shipped 105.4 million phones overall, while Nokia was able to ship 82.9 million. Apple's 26.9 million iPhones also enabled the company to now be listed as the world's third largest cellphone maker.
