Smart devices market grows 55% in a year

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Worldwide shipments of smart mobile devices grew 55 percent year-on-year in Q2 2006, reports Canalys. Handheld segment plummets 33 percent while smart phone shipments increase by 75 percent compared to one year ago.

Nokia retained overall market lead; while Motorola leapfrogged RIM, Sharp, Palm to take second place.

Symbian was still the leading operating system, with 67 percent. Its share grew year-on-year bases, but fell sequentially. Microsoft has the second most popular OS at 15 percent, ahead of RIM on 6 percent

Sharp posted the highest growth among the top five vendors, with shipments of more than a million Symbian FOMA smart phones in Japan during the quarter.

“Symbian has performed well in what many find a difficult market to crack,” said Canalys analyst Nick Spencer, “Q2 saw it break the 10 million cumulative shipment barrier there, thanks to significant volumes from not only Sharp, but also vendors such as Fujitsu, Mitsubishi and Sony Ericsson.”

Another vendor reaching a significant milestone in Q2 was second-placed, and second-fastest growing, Motorola, its position achieved primarily from shipments of more than a million Linux-based smart phones in China in the quarter, but helped also by the initial shipments of the long-awaited ‘Q’ Windows Mobile smart phone in the US as well as its continuing sales of Symbian/UIQ devices.

“Motorola set itself some pretty ambitious targets for the Q,” added Spencer, “And it has done a good job on the supply side in its first quarter, especially when you consider the problems it has had bringing such devices to market in the past.”

All these vendors remain some way behind market leader Nokia, which shipped over 9 million Symbian smart phones during the quarter, a year-on-year rise of 35 percent. Canalys estimates that more than 95 percent of these were S60 models, which have recently branched out from their consumer-oriented, keypad-centric designs to include enterprise-focused models such as the keyboard-based E61.

It is evident from these figures that converged devices have taken over from their standalone predecessors. To further illustrate this, Canalys estimates that Palm’s Treo smart phone shipments grew as a proportion of its total units sold to 58 percent, up from 41 percent a year earlier. Palm still leads the handheld segment, ahead of HP, Dell and Mio Technology, and actually increased its share in that category by 4 percent year-on-year, but total market shipments of handhelds fell 33 percent from over 2 million in Q2 2005, to just 1.4 million last quarter - the biggest percentage fall on record.

Global smart mobile device market shares Q2 2006, Q2 2005
Vendor (top 5) 2Q 2006 Shipments Market share Q206, % 2Q 2005 Shipments Market share Q205, % Growth y/y
Nokia 2 951 450 47.70 % 6,695,800 54.90 % 34.90 %
Motorola 1 076 470 8.40 % 556,050 4.60 % 185.40 %
RIM 689 410 6.20 % 897,280 7.40 % 31.90 %
Sharp 610 020 6.10 % 29,840 0.20 % 3795.80 %
Palm 509 210 6.00 % 1,057,420 8.70 % 7.00 %
Others 1 583 480 25.60 % 2,949,210 24.20 % 64.40 %
Total 7 429 040 100.00 % 12,185,600 100.00 % 55.50 %
Source: Canalys; Smart mobile device market: handhelds, wireless handhelds, smart phones