Sorting Out Mobile Market Share

Posted by: Andy Reinhardt on April 28

Three different market research outfits came out with their estimates of first-quarter handset sales and market share rankings on the same day last Friday. Reading the three releases, it was easy to get confused about what really happened in the quarter. But a bit of analysis confirmed a couple of important trends.

First, Nokia clearly retained its No. 1 position (there was never any doubt about that) selling more than 115 million units for about 40% share. Nokia sales still remain greater than those of its next three rivals combined. Samsung grabbed a strong No. 2, Motorola sank further, LG gained ground, and Sony Ericsson shed a few points.

The difference in the market share numbers from the three researchers turns out to revolve entirely around their estimates of the size of the “other” category, which ranged from a low of 46.1 million units according to Strategy Analytics to a high of 55.7 million units per IDC. ABI Research pegged it in the middle, at 53.5 million.

IDC's high estimate logged the market as a whole at 291.6 million units, while Strategy Analytics came up with just 282 million, lifting the relative share of the "big five" accordingly.

To make sense of it all, I threw together a handy-dandy spreadsheet that merges the three sources. While admittedly not scientific, it may serve as the most accurate benchmark by eliminating anomolies at any one research house. So here are the averaged numbers:

Nokia -- 115.4 million units, 40.1% market share

Samsung -- 46.3 million units, 16.1% market share

Motorola -- 27.4 million units, 9.5% market share

LG -- 24.4 million units, 8.5% market share

Sony Ericsson -- 22.3 million units, 7.8% market share

Other -- 51.8 million units, 18.0% market share

Total -- 287.5 million units

(Source: IDC, Strategy Analytics, ABI Research)

We'll see where things head next quarter.