Global shipments hit a record of 59.5 million up 43 percent year on year.
That's according to the latest report by research firm Strategy Analytics, with the company's summary of its findings worked out from the various companies financial results coming with a mixture of both good and bad news for the major players.
No-nonsense Nokia
A good example of the topsy turvy states of affairs in the mobile market is Nokia, with Strategy Analytics reporting the Finnish firm shipped a record 24 million smartphones worldwide in the quarter up 42 percent from a year earlier.
Nokia a strong 40 percent of the global smartphone market.
However, Nokia's dominance is not due to any renewed surge in North America typically its most difficult market or any great success of its top-end models.
Instead, Strategy Analytics concludes price cuts are behind the growth, with Nokia's support of Symbian enabling it to price its handsets below that of its competitors.
Rivals bearing down on BlackBerry
Likewise, while the report notes RIM is performing steadily shipping 11.2 million smartphones during the quarter, a rise of 40 percent from a year previous to gain 19 percent marketshare it also says the company is being squashed by its competitors.
"RIM's 40 percent annual growth rate is relatively sluggish... its smartphone volumes were growing over two times faster than the industry average in Q2 2009, but the ration has slipped to just one percent in the current quarter, due mostly to fierce competition from Apple and Android in its core North American territory," it states in the report.
The cost of antenna-gate
Apple, too, comes in for criticism from Strategy Analytics. Even though iPhone continues to show the largest growth year-over-year of the handsets detailed just under 62 percent the company claims its marketshare gains are slowing.
"Apple's iPhone shipments, revenues and profitability continued to outperform, but public criticism of the company is mounting," Strategy Analytics claims.
"The honeymoon period for Apple in the mobile world is clearly coming to and end.
"We believe Apple may have lost some heartshare in recent weeks because of its perceived mishandling of the antenna problem, and Apple will have to work hard during the second half of the year to stop lost heartshare converting into lost marketshare."
Despite this, Apple shipped 8.4 million iPhones globally across the quarter, with its worldwide marketshare up from 12.5 percent in Q2 2009 to 14.1 percent in Q2 2010.
In total, smartphones now make up 19 percent of total worldwide handsets volumes, up from 15 percent a year previously.
[source: mocoNews]
