Smartphone market grows 50% with 63 mln units shipped in Q2

from Telecompaper.com:

>>The worldwide smartphone market grew 50 percent year over year in Q2, driven in large part by makers of smartphones powered by Google's Android OS, according to a study by IDC. Vendors of smartphones shipped a total of 63 million units in Q2, compared to 41.9 million units in the same period a year ago. For H1, vendors shipped a total of 118.3 million units, up 54 percent from the 76.8 million units shipped during the first half of 2009. Google's smartphone partners, such as HTC and Samsung, posted the highest year-over-year growth rates in IDC's Q2 smartphone top ten vendor rankings. Four of the top ten vendors, all of whom predominantly ship Android-powered smartphones, posted year-over-year growth rates greater than 100 percent.

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Nokia remained the top smartphone vendor worldwide in Q2, with 38.1 percent market share and 24 million units shipped, up 42 percent , but cited challenges on the high-end of the smartphone market from the competition, resulting in declining ASPs.

Research In Motion broke the 11 million unit shipment figure for the first time in the company's history, gaining 17.8 percent market share, due in part to the BlackBerry Pearl 3G and the BlackBerry Tour 9650 product launches across multiple markets. The company maintained its second place global smartphone position for the seventh consecutive quarter.

Apple maintained its global number three smartphone supplier position with 13.3 percent market share, and record shipments of 8.4 million units, up 61.5 percent.

HTC recorded positive progress during Q2, having more than doubled its shipment volumes to 4.8 million units, from a year ago, and posting healthy double-digit profit margins and steady ASPs.

Samsung supplanted Motorola in the top five smartphone rankings last quarter. The company shipped a record number of smartphones and posted its highest smartphone growth rate since the third quarter of 2008. Samsung benefited from a strong performance in the APEJ region where it launched Galaxy S series devices in markets such as South Korea. Samsung hopes to outperform the market again in the third quarter when it introduces the Galaxy S series of phones to North America.