Analysis: Who's Who in Smartphone Business in Q1 2011

It took a while, but we finally have the numbers for all four major analyst houses (Gartner, IDC, Canalys, and Strategy Analytics). As always, we calculated the average of their totals to find the quarterly total smartphone sales -- which came to 101.2 million, a 2% growth in smartphone sales from the fourth quarter (which included Christmas) of 2010. This is also the first time smartphone sales passed the magical 100 million unit mark.

By manufacturer: How long until Apple takes over?
Based on compiled information, here are the top 10 biggest smartphone brands by manufacturer in the first quarter of 2011.

The big movers are Nokia, which lost 5 massive market-share points in just one quarter, and Samsung and Apple, which both picked up points. HTC, LG, and ZTE are also growing, with Motorola slipping back further into the pack. RIM, Sony Ericsson, and Sharp are roughly holding their ground.

By operating system: Android is the new king
I also did some forced math to try to squeeze as close as possible the reported operating-system numbers to the total numbers above. As usual, this is the more difficult bit, but these numbers should be close. Remember, this is for smartphones only, not tablet PCs or other devices (iOS on iPod touch, Android-powered cars, etc.). The market share by operating system as I see it for first quarter of 2011 are as follows.

First, remember that Symbian also still has Japanese makers that support it in addition to Nokia (that's why the percentage here is bigger than in the previous table). An interesting race among the small operating systems is hidden in the percentages as well. Several sources say Samsung's bada sold 3.5 million (thus almost 4% when rounding off), compared with about 2 million for Windows Mobile 6.5 and 1.6 million for the new Phone 7. So even in the first quarter of 2011, Microsoft's newest operating system is being beaten even by its older sibling, and Samsung's new OS outsells all Microsoft Windows Phone 7 partners combined, by more than 2-to-1.

A number we should look out for is that Samsung has not given a split for bada vs. Android vs. Microsoft handsets. But if the numbers are roughly right, we should have been at about 8.8 million cumulative bada shipments by end of Q1, and during the second quarter of 2011, we should pass 10 million cumulative bada devices. Expect some noise soon from the Samsung PR team.

February's projection for a Nokia market-share crash in 2011
On the Nokia watch: How is my model compared with reality? When I did my "Nokia premium smartphone customer giveaway sweepstakes" analysis, I projected the following numbers, which we can now compare with actual figures.

I said in my analysis that I was offering my "best case" scenario, as there was plenty of Nokia doom and gloom at the time, following Stephen Elop's stunning Microsoft announcement on Feb. 11. But there were several competent analysts who came to me and said they felt I was being too harsh on Nokia -- that although things would be bad, they wouldn't be quite that bad. Well, now we have the first evaluation of those numbers. And it's not that bad -- it's worse.

So Nokia is already 4 market-share points and 5 million unit sales below what I projected. The average sales-price drop is almost spot-on as I predicted, with total smartphone revenues $700 million below what I projected for the quarter. If you thought Nokia's 2011 was going to be an annus horribilis based on Ahonen's doom-and-gloom analysis, it's clearly going to be far worse.

You're free to comment below with your own guesses of how much worse the second quarter will be than my original projection in the above.

Android split
With lots of interest in how the Android world is doing, I am continuing with my best guess of how the Android manufacturer internal market shares are going. I find for Q1 that the Android family splits its 36 million handsets sold like this.

I'll come back later with some gossip and news about the various brands and how they are doing in Year 2 of the smartphone bloodbath. But I wanted to post these market-share numbers, as I know many of our readers have been waiting for them.

More from Bright Side of News*:

• Smartphone Bloodbath: Google to Beat Apple, RIM by End of 2010?
• Android Sells 100,000 Smartphones per Day, What Does That Mean?
• iPhone 4: Apple Increasingly Preaching to the Choir

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