{"id":42933,"date":"2012-02-07T22:19:51","date_gmt":"2012-02-07T20:19:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/?p=42933"},"modified":"2012-02-08T12:39:00","modified_gmt":"2012-02-08T10:39:00","slug":"iphone-tops-smartphone-list-again","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/gadgets\/42933-iphone-tops-smartphone-list-again.html","title":{"rendered":"iPhone tops smartphone list again"},"content":{"rendered":"

Massive fourth-quarter sales of the iPhone 4S helped Apple<\/a> reclaim its crown as the world’s top smartphone maker, as global smartphone sales jumped 55 per cent on the same period last year, according to a report published Tuesday by research firm IDC.<\/p>\n

Customers around the world snapped up a total 158 million smartphones in the quarter, compared to 102 million in the last three months of the previous year, with Apple’s 37 million iPhones leading the way.<\/p>\n

“By the end of the quarter, one out of every three mobiles phones shipped worldwide was a smartphone,” said IDC senior research analyst Ramon Llamas in a statement.<\/p>\n

“The launch of Apple’s iPhone 4S played a key role in smartphone growth to capture pent-up demand, and smartphone launches from other vendors also provided a broad selection to meet varying preferences and budgets.”<\/p>\n

Llamas said falling smartphone prices and consumer desire to upgrade to more powerful models were the main factors behind the global smartphone surge.<\/p>\n

Despite Apple’s late year sales spike, Samsung<\/a> still sold the most smartphones in 2011, shipping a total of 94 million, compared to Apple’s 93.2 million, the report said.<\/p>\n

In total, customers bought 491.6 million smartphones last year, up 61 per cent on the 304.7 million they bought in 2010.<\/p>\n

Nokia<\/a> was the big loser of the year, as its market share slumped by more than 50 per cent to 12.4 per cent, while Blackberry<\/a> manufacturer Research in Motion<\/a> saw its market share drop from 14 per cent to 8 per cent.<\/p>\n

A separate study by the NPD group<\/a> published Tuesday found that Apple and Android devices accounted for more than 90 per cent of the smartphone market, with Android accounting for 48 per cent of the market.<\/p>\n

The Google-powered operating system was especially strong among first-time smartphone buyers, 57 per cent of whom purchased Android phones, the report said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Apple reclaim its crown as the world’s top smartphone maker<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":35,"featured_media":35258,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_sma_x_autopost_status":"idle","_sma_x_autopost_error":"","_sma_x_post_id":"","_sma_facebook_post_id":"","_sma_instagram_post_id":"","_sma_threads_post_id":"","_sma_x_attempts":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[29],"tags":[36,605,1125,5170],"class_list":["post-42933","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-gadgets","tag-active","tag-apple","tag-iphone","tag-iphone-4s"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42933"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/35"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=42933"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42933\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":42935,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42933\/revisions\/42935"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/35258"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=42933"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=42933"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=42933"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}