HTC Becomes Highest Shipping Smartphone Vendor In the US 151
An anonymous reader writes with an excerpt from an article in BGR: "Samsung blew past Apple and Nokia in the third quarter to become the No. 1 smartphone vendor in the world, but another emerging smartphone vendor stole the top spot in the U.S. according to a new report. Market research firm Canalys on Monday released country-level smartphone shipment estimates and according to its figures, HTC shipped 5.7 million own-brand smartphones and another 700,000 T-Mobile-branded handsets last quarter to take the top spot with 6.4 million total devices shipped."
Re:Figures provided by analysts, not the companies (Score:4, Interesting)
Then these other companies (Strategy Analytics and Canalys) step in with their own estimates that are dodgy at best.
It's a mistake to group these two companies together. I too am suspicious of Strategy Analytics. I'm unaware of any history or reputation they have in this field. Canalys on the other hand has been putting out mobile phone market share studies every quarter for about 10 years. They are a reputable research company, and have charted the highs and lows of many manufacturers and mobile OSs. I've never known them of having unrealistic estimates by anyone in the industry.
There's also Gartner that do them, and they are credible too, though I'd suggest Canalys is better.
3. What is counted as a smartphone? Phone manufacturers are cramming more smartphone features into low-end devices; remember that even the most basic Symbian phone was counted by Nokia as a smartphone, and look how those ostensibly great sales turned out for Nokia.
There's much confusion about what constitutes a smartphone. You rarely see it defined anywhere. But it's essentially this:
1) A smartphone is a phone which can run third party apps, written with the same APIs as the built in apps. Such that third party apps can be indistinguishable from the built in apps. They are "first class citizens".
2) A featurephone is a phone which can run "applets". WAP, J2ME and such like. They are add on apps, but they limited compared to the built in apps.
3) A dumb phone is a phone which doesn't qualify for either of the above.
The very first Symbian phone, the Ericsson R380, wasn't a smartphone. I don't recall if it qualified as a feature phone or just a dumb phone. But it wasn't a smartphone. Other than that, every Symbian phone was a smartphone. Just because it was 10 years ago and the apps were less flashy doesn't mean they weren't smartphones.