Smartphone Q2 2012 Market Dips by 2.3%, Despite Powerful Performance by Apple and Samsung [Report]

Market researcher Gartner Group has recently released a data analysis report, according to which the worldwide sales of smartphones has dropped by 2.3% in 2Q12 with 419 million units of sales across the globe.

According to the press release issue by the organisation, Apple and Samsung were the two biggest winners in the June quarter. Apple sold an estimated 28.94 million iPhones compared to 19.63 million in the same quarter last year, while Samsung’s end-user sales climbed to 90.43 million mobile phones from 69.83 million in the second quarter of 2011.

However their high sales figures were not able to add much to the declining industry. Anshul Gupta, principal research analyst at Gartner has mentioned in the press release that "demand slowed further in the second quarter of 2012 with challenging economic environment and users postponing upgrades to take advantage of high-profile device launches and promotions available later in the year slowed demand across markets. Demand of feature phones continued to decline, significantly weakening the overall mobile phone market.”

He went on adding that “high-profile smartphone launches from key manufacturers such as the anticipated Apple iPhone 5, along with Chinese manufacturers pushing 3G and preparing for major device launches in the second half of 2012, will drive the smartphone market upward. However, feature phones will continue to see pressure.”

While, Samsung's growth was driven by the record breaking sales made by the Galaxy smartphones, which accounts to about 50% of the company's sales figure for the Cupertino-giant it was iPhone which drew the sales.

At the same time, Gartner analysts have predicted that "the arrival of the iPhone 5 should provide the greatest upgrade opportunity yet" for the smartphone users.

The other vendors that saw growth in the quarter were Huawei and ZTE, which sold 17.94 million phones last quarter compared to 13.07 million during the same period last year. All other vendors saw year-over-year declines according to Gartner, including HTC, which sold 9.30 million phones compared to 11.02 million in Q2 2011.

On the other hand, Nokia’s mobile phone sales declined 14.8 percent in the second quarter of 2012. The reports suggested that Nokia succeeded, to a certain extent, in winning feature phone market share, as its sales grew quarter-on-quarter. However, the manufacturer still continue to struggle to find a place in consumers’ minds as a replacement for Android.

“Declining smartphone sales is worsening Nokia’s overall position, as it had already lost the No. 1 position to Samsung in the previous quarter and is facing reduced profitability due to continuous declining sales of premium smartphones,” said the analyst report.