May 05, 2011, 4:13 PM — Apple's iPhone is inching closer to Nokia's top spot in smartphones globally, according to first-quarter 2011 results reported by IDC on Thursday.
With the iPhone in the second spot, Blackberry maker Research in Motion dropped to third after finishing second a year ago, IDC said. Overall, 99.6 million smartphones shipped in the first quarter, out of 372 million overall mobile phones.
Nokia sold 24.2 million smartphones in the first quarter, maintaining its global smartphone lead despite announcing it will move in coming years from Symbian to Windows Phone as its main smartphone operating system, IDC said. Nokia "may find itself in danger of ceding market share as the competition ramps up," IDC said.
Apple shipped 18.7 million iPhones in the first quarter, IDC said, a new record for a single quarter "and inched closer to market leader Nokia with fewer than six million units separating the two companies," IDC noted.
Apple also had triple-digit growth in the U.S. with the Verizon Wireless CDMA iPhone 4 and in greater China.
RIM, while down from second place over a year ago, remained in third place from the fourth quarter of 2010. The majority of RIM's shipments are older, lower-cost devices, IDC noted, a trend that will continue in the second quarter.
Samsung finished fourth in smartphones for the first quarter with 10.8 million smartphones shipped, while HTC finished fifth with 8.9 million smartphones.
Samsung grew the most, 350% year-over-year of any vendor, over its 2.4 million smartphones in the first quarter of 2010. Samsung has a multiple OS strategy and sells mostly Android smartphones, including Galaxy S phones, as well as Windows Phone 7 and Wave devices.
HTC also had a record for the first quarter, growing 230% from the first quarter of 2010. HTC offers the Evo Shift 4G on WiMax at Sprint and the LTE-ready Thunderbolt on Verizon.
The smartphone market grew by 80% in the first quarter over the first quarter of 2010, partly due to added devices from Android as well as a range of models in all price ranges. IDC analyst Kevin Restive said, "there is ample room for several suppliers to co-exist, at least for the short term."
Read more about smartphones in Computerworld's Smartphones Topic Center.
