One billion handsets shipped in 2006
Last year was a record one for mobile phone sales, topping the one billion mark for the first time. And 300m of these shipped in Q4, making it a record quarter and up 22% on the previous year.
Nokia remains number one by some margin, selling 100m devices in Q4 alone, another record for the manufacturer.
But it’s Sony Ericsson that’s making leaps and bounds, increasing its market share by 2.8% over 2006, grabbing 8.7% of the market in Q4, and selling only slightly fewer handsets than Samsung (26m versus 20m). But even selling 6m less handsets, SE’s revenue bettered that of Samsung - $4.9bn compared to $4.6bn. Sony Ericsson had a great year with it’s higher end devices, in more developed markets such as Europe - hence the higher revenue per unit.
For the whole of 2006, market shares ended up as:
- Nokia - 34.1%
- Motorola - 21.3%
- Samsung - 11.6%
- Sony Ericsson - 7.3%
- LG - 6.3%
Sony Ericsson’s gain was almost purely at the expense of Samsung, who lost 2.1% share over the year - though LG saw their share decline somewhat also.
Data source: Strategy Analytics (SA), Vendor Market Share: Global Handset Shipments Top 1 Billion Units in 2006.
