WASHINGTON (AFP) — Worldwide smartphone sales grew by 11.5 percent in the third quarter of the year, the lowest rate of growth ever recorded for the devices, research company Gartner reported on Thursday.
Nokia maintained its number one position with a 42.4 percent share of the smartphone market in the third quarter of 2008, Gartner said, but for the first time the Finnish firm recorded a decline in sales of three percent year-on-year.
"Nokia is feeling the pressure from increased competition in the consumer smartphone market," said Roberta Cozza, principal analyst at Gartner.
"The company introduced solid N series products with top features, but its lack of a commercial touch-screen device in its smartphone portfolio prevented Nokia from capitalizing from consumer demand for this feature."
Gartner said worldwide sales of smartphones, which allow users to surf the Internet or send and receive email, totalled 36.5 million units in the third quarter of 2008. The 11.5 percent growth was sharply lower than the 26 percent and 16 percent recorded in the first two quarters of the year.
Nokia sold 15.47 million units in the third quarter, Canada's Research in Motion (RIM) 5.8 million, Apple 4.72 million and Taiwan's HTC 1.65 million, Gartner said.
"The current economic climate is negatively impacting sales of higher end devices," Cozza said. "Going forward, we should expect the smartphone device market to continue to grow but at a slower pace."
Gartner said sales of RIM BlackBerry smartphones increased 81.7 percent in the third quarter of 2008 and RIM sales will receive a boost from new products such as the touch-screen Blackberry Storm in the fourth quarter.
RIM increased its market share to 15.9 percent in the third quarter from 9.7 percent a year ago.
Gartner said Apple's iPhone regained its number three position in the global smartphone market in the third quarter from HTC and improved its market share to 12.9 percent from 3.4 percent.
North America was the fastest growing market with a 68 percent increase in smartphone sales in the third quarter of 2008, Gartner said, mostly by RIM and Apple.
Smartphone sales in Europe, the Middle East and Africa increased 14 percent year-on-year, Gartner said, with Nokia remaining the market leader despite an eight percent decline in market share. Apple moved in front of HTC and RIM to gain the number two spot in the region with 15.6 percent share of the market.
Smartphone sales declined 11 percent in Asia/Pacific and 23 percent in Japan.
The smartphone market grew 56 percent in Latin America, helped by the official introduction of Apple's iPhone 3G.
The Gartner report came as Nokia offered a bleak forecast for the global cell phone market in 2009 because of a slowdown in consumer spending.
"Nokia expects 2009 industry mobile device volumes to decline five percent or more from 2008 levels," the company said.
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