The smartphone marketplace continues to grow almost exponentially, and the iPhone continues to have the most impressive performance record in that most dynamic of all cell phones sales arenas.

The latest Gartner report on cell phone sales is out, and the news it contains may no longer be news, or even surprising. The latest report, though, continues to show the meteoric rise of the smartphone within the overall mobile arena, and shows once again that Apple’s iPhone is the big winner. And being the big winner in a marketplace that has grown by 27 percent in a year over year quarterly comparison is a big deal indeed.

Smartphones have been popular since they were first introduced, but high prices and limited choices kept demand low at first. Now that prices are tumbling and there is a wide variety of smartphones available, sales are going through the roof. Phones from Apple, Blackberry, Palm, and Android (among others) are insuring enough variety of features, price, and carrier that smartphone may have entered the mainstream, with nowhere to go but up. Impressively, 41 million smartphones were sold in the second quarter of this year, according to a CNET story.

Equally impressively, Apple sold 5.4 million of those smartphones. The growth of the iPhone has been a phenomenon. One year ago, the iPhone accounted for 2.8 percent of smartphone sales in the second quarter. This year, the Apple sales share was 13.3 percent. Perhaps one fact from the Gartner report does the best job of making the iPhones sales growth clear: “To put the iPhone numbers in perspective, Apple sold more iPhones during the launch weekend in June for the iPhone 3GS than it sold for the entire second quarter of 2008.” That is impressive indeed.

Meanwhile market leader Nokia’s share is down, business leader Research in Motion’s Blackberry sales  grew only a little over 1 percentage point, and no one else posted numbers that were impressive enough to trumpet, one way or another. Imagine what the numbers would be if corporations subsidized the iPhone like they do the Blackberry and Apple moved their handset away from AT&T, whose horrible network and service are proving to be the iPhone’s biggest drawback. Were those factors to line up on the side of the iPhone, no one currently in the market could come close.

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Entry was posted on Wednesday, August 12th, 2009 at 4:37 pm under News, iPhone.  Print This Post

Read more entries by Michael W. Jones.
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