Despite the global recession, smartphone shipments continue to grow. Second quarter 2009 shipments rose to 38.1 million units, up 13.4 percent from the same quarter a year ago. Globally, Nokia maintained its lead (44.3 percent) while both RIM (20.9 percent) and Apple (13.7 percent) continued to show impressive growth numbers.
Regionally, the picture is different. In North America, RIM has the lead with 52.2 percent. It is followed by Apple (23.2 percent) and HTC (5.6 percent). In EMEA, the top three are Nokia (64 percent), Apple (13.6 percent) and RIM (10.3 percent). In the Asia Pacific area, Nokia (59.7 percent) leads over Sharp (9.4 percent) and Fujitsu (9.2 percent).
Touchscreen devices now account for 39.6 percent of units shipped with keypad and keyboard devices in second and third place respectively. Touchscreen device shipments grew nearly 300 percent from the same quarter a year ago and keyboard devices recorded a 29 percent growth. On the other hand, keypad-based smartphones showed a 42.3 percent decline.
On the operating system side, Symbian accounted for just over 50 percent of shipments. It was followed by the mobile operating systems from RIM (20.9 percent), Apple (13.7 percent), Microsoft (9 percent), and Google (2.8 percent). Both Symbian and Microsoft’s Windows Mobile showed declines at 2.1 and 28.7 percent respectively.