Mobile phone sales in markets worldwide fell last year for the first time since 2009, as consumer appetite for cheaper devices weakened, specialized research firm Gartner announced on Wednesday.
A total of 1.75 billion mobile phones were sold to end users worldwide in 2012, a decrease of 1.7 percent compared to 2011, Gartner reported.
– Tough economic conditions, changing consumer preferences, and intense market competition have weakened the global mobile phone market – stated analyst Anshul Gupta. Smartphone sales continued to grow, Gupta noted, adding that technologically advanced devices will for the first time account for more than half of the market this year.
Samsung and Apple again dominated the market, with the Korean company selling 385 million mobile phones, of which 53.5 percent were smartphones, while the American giant sold 130 million smartphones.
The two companies’ share of the smartphone market rose in the fourth quarter to 52 percent, up from 46 percent in the previous three months. Chinese company Huawei ranked third in the world for smartphone sales for the first time in the fourth quarter, Gartner reported. In 2012, they sold a total of 27.2 million smartphones to end users, an increase of 74 percent compared to 2011.
