LG, Sony Ericsson, Motorola, RIM Cite ‘Disappointing’ Q4 Sales

Worldwide smartphone sales to end users jumped to 149 million units in Q4 2011, up 47.3 percent year over year, according to Gartner. Total smartphone sales in 2011 hit 472 million units, accounting for 31 percent of all mobile device sales, up 58 percent from 2010, Gartner said. Record sales of iPhones were behind the surge, promoting Apple to overtake LG to become the number three mobile phone vendor in the world, Gartner said. In smartphones, Apple became the top for the year 2011 with a 19 percent slice, it said.

Western Europe and North America led most of the smartphone growth for Apple during Q4, said Gartner analyst Roberta Cozza, who said the spike in iPhone sales in Western Europe in Q4 “saved the overall smartphone market” after two quarters of “slow sales.” While Apple and Samsung sales remained strong, LG, Sony Ericsson, Motorola and Research In Motion (RIM) recorded “disappointing results as they struggled to improve volumes and profits significantly,” Cozza said. They were also facing a “much stronger threat” from the midrange and low end of the smartphone market as ZTE and Huawei gained share during the quarter, she said.

Worldwide mobile device sales to end users climbed 5.4 percent from Q4 2010 and reached 1.8 billion units for the year, up 11.1 percent from 2010, according to Gartner data. Worldwide smartphone sales growth for 2012 is forecast to scale back to 39 percent, while total mobile device sales will advance by about 7 percent, Gartner said. Nokia topped the charts for Q4 with 111.7 million units sold, down 8.7 percent from 2010, and number-two Samsung narrowed the gap with smartphone sales of 34 million units in Q4, it said. Nokia introduced the Lumia 710 and 800 handsets during the quarter and will have to continue to offer aggressive prices to lure communications service providers away from Android-based devices, Cozza said.

Apple sold 35.5 million smartphones to end users in Q4, up 121.4 percent year over year due to “continued attention to channel management,” according to Gartner, and it moved up on Samsung, which saw some inventory build-up in smartphones. While Apple’s strong performance will continue into the first quarter of 2012 as availability of the iPhone 4S widens, it “will not benefit from delayed purchases” as it did in Q4 2011, leading to an expected sequential sales drop, Gartner said.