Smart phone shipments jump 43% in Q2

There’s no argument about the feverish pace of smart phone and handset sales of late, but it’s always good to have some fresh hard numbers from Strategy Analytics to back it up.
Smart phone shipments jumped 43% year-over-year to 60 million units globally in the second quarter of 2010 and handset shipments grew by 13% in the quarter to 308 million, according to the firm.
“Healthy operator subsidies, vigorous competition between premium-tier vendors and a growing range of lower-cost models continued to drive the upswing,” analyst Neil Mawston wrote in the report.
He also noted a “robust demand for QWERTY” devices, which helped BlackBerry-maker Research In Motion Ltd. (RIMM) and Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd. mark noticeable market share gains where most of their competitors lost share.
Thanks to the success of its iPhone, Apple Inc. (AAPL) shipments rose 61 percent and the firm held a 14 percent share of the smart phone market at the end of the quarter, according to Strategy Analytics. Apple reportedly shipped 8.4 million iPhones during the quarter, which was up from the 5.2 million it shipped a year ago, but down from the 8.8 million iPhones it shipped in the first quarter of 2010, as All Things Digital points out.
Based of that single quarter-over-quarter decline, “the honeymoon period for Apple in the mobile world is clearly coming to an end,” Mawston concluded in his report.
“Apple was criticized for its intensive production methods in China, while the iPhone has been heavily criticized for its poorly designed touchable antenna, and may have lost some heartshare in recent weeks because of its perceived mishandling of the antenna problem.” As such, Mawston wrote that the iPhone is “more vulnerable to competitive attacks from rivals like Nokia, Android, BlackBerry and Motorola.”
Market share positions at end of Q2
For all the heat Nokia Corp. (NOK) has faced lately, it still reigned supreme with 111.1 million units shipped and a 36.1% industry-best market share in the quarter. Samsung, it’s next closest competitor in terms of market share, ended the quarter with 63.8 million units shipped and a 20.7% share and LG Electronics Inc. ended the quarter with 30.6 million units shipped and a 10% share. Research In Motion and sony Ericsson Mobile Communications AB both grabbed a 3.6% share with 11.2 million units and 11 million units shipped, respectively. Finally, the ominous group of “others” grabbed the remaining share of 26%.