Smartphone shipments outstripped feature phone shipments in Western Europe for the first time during the second quarter of 2011, according to research firm IDC.
Smartphone shipments grew to reach 52 percent of the total mobile phone shipments within the region during the second quarter, an increase of 48 per cent year over year to 21.8 million units. In contrast, feature phone shipments declined by 29 per cent to 20.4 million units, IDC said.
However, the total Western European mobile phone market declined 3 percent year on year to 42.2 million units in the quarter, according to IDC.
Francisco Jeronimo, European mobile devices research manager at IDC, said in a statement that a number of factors were responsible for the drop including the current economic environment in the Eurozone and "the sharp decline of Nokia, which was not totally offset by the remaining players, which may indicate that Symbian fans are holding off on their phone replacements until Nokia launches its Windows Phones."
Interestingly, mocoNews noted that although Nokia smartphone shipments have dropped 44 per cent, Jeronimo thinks that this could turn around in the year ahead: "Operators are looking at Microsoft and Nokia as a way of not being so dependent on Android," Jeronimo told mocoNews.
Google's Android platform dominated mobile shipments in the second quarter, accounting for 48.5 per cent of all shipments due to strong performances from Samsung and HTC. Apple was in third place and achieved 64 per cent growth in the region. Jeronimo noted that in the last quarter this was mainly driven by shipments of the white iPhone.
For more:
- see this IDC press release
- see this mocoNews article
- see this Independent article
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