Global smartphone shipments hit an all-time high in the third quarter 2008, and while the United States market more than doubled, Japan experienced a steep decline, according to a report.
Apple, Research in Motion, and HTC made large gains in market share, which came at the expense of share leader Nokia. Although it lost some of its huge lead, Nokia retained its top spot.
Despite softness in the overall mobile phone market, 39.9 million smartphones were shipped in the third quarter 2008--an all-time high for a single quarter.
The total represented a 28 percent increase from the 31.1 million units shipped in the third quarter of 2007, according to estimates published late Thursday by research firm Canalys.
Smartphones now represent 13 percent of the total mobile phone market, up from 11 percent last quarter, according to the report.
In the phone maker race Apple vaulted from an also-ran into the second spot behind Nokia, posting a whopping 523 percent growth from 1.1 million units shipped in the third quarter of 2007 to 6.9 million units shipped in the third quarter of 2008.
“It was expected that Apple would figure among the smartphone leaders this quarter with that huge new product shipment, it was just a question of how high it would be,” Peter Cunningham of Canalys said in a statement.
Despite being pushed into third place by Apple, RIM’s shipments grew more than 80 percent to 6 million units despite delays in rolling out the BlackBerry Bold.
With the Storm and the clamshell Pearl 8220 available in the fourth quarter, RIM could regain the second spot, the report said.
Motorola took the fourth spot, while HTC, which doubled its market share and almost tripled the number of units shipped from 850,400 to 2.3 million, rounded out the top five.
Nokia easily retained its top spot, but its share declined from 51.4 percent in the third quarter 2007 to 38.9 percent in the third quarter 2008. Nokia’s actual shipment numbers stayed relatively steady from 16 million units shipped in 2007 to 15.4 units in 2008.