Worldwide mobile device shipments in the third quarter were up 83 percent from a year ago, with Nokia Corp. leading the charge, according to recent research from Canalys.
The firm defines the mobile device market as feature phones, smart phones, handhelds and wireless handhelds.
Nokia grabbed nearly 40 percent of the market, according to the research. PalmOne Inc. followed in second place with 14.5-percent market share, which Canalys attributed to more than 300,000 shipments of the Treo 600 smart phone, mostly in the United States, during the quarter.
“PalmOne is the clear leader in the U.S. smart-phone segment, having raised its share of this market to a record 55 percent this quarter,” said Chris Jones, Canalys director and senior analyst. “The new Treo 650 is a welcome refresh of the product, but it still needs to branch out into other designs and get more operators on board if it wants to take on the very strong European and Japanese smart-phone vendors in the markets beyond North America.”
Hewlett-Packard Co. came in third with 9.3 percent overall mobile device market share, though Canalys noted the company has a 23-percent market share in data-centric mobile devices. Research In Motion Inc. followed HP with 8.3-percent market share and Fujitsu came in fifth with 6.9 percent.
Nokia’s dominant position catapulted Symbian to the top of the operating-system market-share list. The group held 50.2 percent share for the third quarter. Microsoft and PalmSource follow with 20.2 percent and 16.9 percent, respectively.
Strategy Analytics also recently released research on mobile-phone handset sales during the third quarter. The group said global handset sales grew at a 25-percent annual rate during the third quarter to 168 million units shipped, with three of the top six vendors growing 50 percent since last year. Strategy Analytics forecasts global sales of 670 million units for full-year 2004.
