The analyst firm IDC has just published their Q1 2013 figures, and they can confidently say that, for the first time in mobile telecoms history, smartphones outsold feature phones. Roughly 418.6 million mobile phones shipped during the first three months of this year, with 51.6% of them running a smartphone operating system of some kind.
Who’s number one? Samsung, of course. IDC says they sold 70.7 million smartphones, which means they sold more smartphones than the next four players (Apple, LG, Huawei, ZTE) combined. That means Samsung shipped 32.7% of the world’s smartphones during the quarter. How did everyone else do? Apple is in second place, with a hair over 17% of the smartphone market, and then LG, Huawei, and ZTE all have between 4% and 5% for themselves. Noticeably absent is Nokia, who should have switched from Symbian to Android back in 2011, but instead decided to go with Windows Phone for reasons I’m still trying to understand. What’s going to happen in Q3? The Galaxy S4 will likely drive up Samsung’s share, though how much remains to be seen, especially considering the news about a DRAM shortage.
