Just hours after IDC placed Samsung as the world's second largest mobile manufacturer, stats sourced by asymco suggests the Korean firm is enjoying the most growth in a smartphone market that surged 73 percent in Q4 2010.
Though, as the blog states, Samsung releases smartphones shipment figures less regularly than some of its rivals, by plotting a line through the gaps in between, it's possible to deduce that the company was the fastest growing OEM within the sector across the course of the quarter.
On board with Android"Samsung had a very good year with 25.2 million smartphones sold," asymco's Horace Dediu says in the entry, suggesting Samsung's 2009 sales were less than 5 million.
"Their growth has meant they overtook both Motorola and HTC and are likely to overtake RIM this year. Samsung owes its success mainly to adopting Android."
Smart Samsung
Dediu deduces that, it's Samsung's decision to move quickly from feature phones to a catalogue of smartphones that has placed it in the mind of the consumer, the end result being it's been able to gain considerable ground on Nokia.
Despite still being the market leader, the Finnish firm has found such a transition far harder to master.
As a result, Nokia has saw the lowest rate of growth in Q4 2010, coming in at 36 percent. Though an exact figure for Samsung is unavailable, Dediu states the firm outpaced second placed HTC, which grew by 142 percent.
Stellar iPhone sales also saw Apple grow its smartphone base by 86 percent, just behind another major Android advocate, Motorola, on 96 percent.
Asymo reckons the growth per company during Q4 was:
HTC: 142 percent
Motorola: 96 percent
Apple: 86 percent
RIM: 40.5 percent (period ending November)
Nokia: 36 percent
[source: asymco]
