Analysis firm Gartner has revealed that not only has Apple established itself as the number one smartphone vendor of Q4 of 2011 and 2011 as a whole, it has also overtaken LG as the third biggest seller of mobile devices with 89 million units sold for 2011.
As you can see, Apple sold 35 million of those in Q4 alone, a considerable chunk of their total. Nokia had a considerable lead over Samsung with 111 million units sold.
However these tables don’t illustrate the number of smartphones sold. If you think about how many people buy cheap Nokia prepayed phones, then Apple are doing amazingly well to be competitive in that ranking.
Smartphone sales soared to 149 million in units in Q4 of 2011 according to the report, with Apple having a market share of 23.8%. for that quarter and a 19% share over the whole of 2011.
“Expectations for 2012 are for the overall market to grow by about 7 percent, while smartphone growth is expected to slow to around 39 percent,” said Annette Zimmermann, principal research analyst at Gartner.
