Smartphones see best quarter since 2006

It’s proving to be a great year for smartphones, with research outfit Gartner noting sales of the devices hit 54 million in Q1 of 2010 alone, an increase of 49%.
Gartner said the first quarter had been the strongest ever for smartphone sales since way back in 2006, which indicates people are finally starting to emerge from two years of economic hardship. Indeed, according to the figures, smartphones made up some 17.3% of all handset sales last quarter up 13.6% over Q1 2009.
Google’s Android operating system seems to have caused quite a shake-up and won a victory against rival Microsoft, pipping the Redmond software giant to the post and snatching fourth place in the smartphone operating system hierarchy.
In the US, sales of Android based phones shot up by 70%, while Nokia’s troubled Symbian kept the global market share crown, despite a decrease from 49% to 44% this year.
It will come as no surprise that Apple had an incredible quarter, managing to sell twice as many iPhones year-on-year.
RIM also managed a milestone in Q1, finally managing to grab a fourth place foot-hold in the handset manufacturing league table, and seeing sales increase 46%.
Overall mobile phone sales were also up, with Gartner calculating a 17% leap to 314.7 million, aided by a huge push towards mobility in developing markets.