WIRELESS AND MOBILE NEWS

The latest Gartner report shows a massive increase in smartphone sales, Android moving up smartphone platforms, and HTC entering the top ten device makers.

In the second quarter of 2010, there was 13.8 percent increase from the same period in 2009, according to Gartner, Inc. Smartphone sales to end users accounted for 19 percent of
worldwide mobile device sales, an increase of 50.5 percent from the second quarter of 2009.

As far as smartphones go,Android is now the number three smartphone operating system following Nokia(Symbian) and BlackBerry (RIM), ahead of iPhone and Windows Phone.

However, the average selling prices (ASPs) were lower than expected and margins fell due to a stronger dollar, a depreciating euro, and intense competition that drove price adjustments and changes to the product mix.

While new product introductions from Apple, HTC and Motorola, along with the drop in ASPs, drove strong sales of smartphones, shortages of components, such as active matrix organic LED (AMOLED) displays impaired sales volumes of some of the more popular new smartphones.

HTC made its debut in the top 10 worldwide ranking, holding the No. 8 position with 139.1 percent growth year-on-year. This reflects the popularity of its Android portfolio but also a more aggressive branding strategy compared to the same period in 2009.

The top over mobile device manufacturer ins order were 1-Nokia, 2-Samsung, 3-LG, 4-BlackBerry (RIM), 5-Sony Ericsson, 6-Motorola, 7- Apple, 8-HTC, 9-HTC and 10-ZTE.

Worldwide Smartphone Sales to End Users by Operating System in 2Q10 (Thousands of Units)

Company	2Q10  Units	2Q10 Market Share (%)	2Q09  Units	2Q09 Market Share (%)
Symbian	25,386.8	41.2	20,880.8	51.0
Research In Motion	11,228.8	18.2	7,782.2	19.0
Android	10,606.1	17.2	755.9	1.8
iOS	8,743.0	14.2	5,325.0	13.0
Microsoft Windows Mobile	3,096.4	5.0	3,829.7	9.3
Linux	1,503.1	2.4	1,901.1	4.6
Other OSs	1,084.8	1.8	497.1	1.2
Total	61,649.1	100.0	40,971.8	100.0

Source: Gartner (August 2010)

Gartner said CSPs will increasingly offer more affordable tiered data plans to users. Tiered data plans will make smartphones more accessible to different market segments and help make smartphones the dominant device category in mature markets. This means that total cost of ownership will be lower, and new users will face less of a barrier to entry.

In the second quarter of 2010, Nokia's mobile device sales to end users reached 111.5 million units and a share of 34.2 percent. Samsung sold 65.3 million devices in the second quarter of 2010 that translated into a 20.1 percent market share.

Research In Motion (RIM)'s mobile device sales to end users reached 11.2 million units in the second quarter of 2010, confirming RIM's position as the fourth largest brand with a share of 3.4 percent this quarter.

New devices running BlackBerry OS 6.0 -- such as RIM's first touchscreen qwerty slider, the Torch -- will be available from the third quarter of 2010.  Gartner believes the Torch's form factor will still appeal more to business users than to consumers and will stop many loyal BlackBerry users defecting to other platforms, but it won't attract many new users to the brand.

Apple's mobile device sales reached 8.7 million units or a 2.7 percent share of the overall mobile device market, but a 14.2 percent of the smartphone market. Apple maintained its No. 7 position in the worldwide mobile device market and held the No. 3 position in the worldwide smartphone market. Apple's sales would have been higher if it had not had to face tight inventory management in preparation for the arrival of the iPhone 4 at the end of the second quarter of 2010. Apple also suffered from some supply constraint on the new device. We expect that a wider global rollout of iPhone 4 will sustain Apple's sales momentum throughout the second half of 2010.

In the smartphone operating system (OS) market, Android expanded rapidly in the second quarter of 2010, overtaking Apple's iPhone OS to become the third-most-popular OS in the world (see Table 2). In the U.S, it also overtook RIM's OS to become the No. 1 smartphone OS in this region. "A non-exclusive strategy that produces products selling across many communication service providers (CSPs), and the backing of so many device manufacturers, which are bringing more attractive devices to market at several different price points, were among the factors that yielded its growth this quarter," said Ms. Milanesi.

Smartphone sales to end users totaled 61.6 million units in the second quarter of 2010, a 50.5 percent increase from the same period in 2009. The top four smartphone OS vendors exhibited growth in the second quarter of 2010, and accounted for 91 percent of the worldwide smartphone OS market, up 6 percent year-on-year.