Samsung Will Lead Smart Phone Unit Sales for 2 Years

Fitch Ratings expects Samsung Electronics to maintain its leading position in smart phone unit sales over the next two years.

Samsung’s market share of smart phone unit sales has risen to 31 percent from just three percent two years ago. In 2011, the company sold 96.7 million smartphones (Apple: 91.3 million), and 45 million in the first quarter of 2012 (Apple: 35.1 million). Apple’s unit market share increased to 24 percent from 16 percent, but Nokia plunged to eight percent from 38 percent.
 
In large part, the unit sales lead is possible because Samsung has a wider range of handset models than Apple, enabling a more effective penetration of both developed and emerging markets.

Samsung also is the undisputed leader for key smartphone components – including display, processor and memory chip technologies – reinforcing the likelihood that its future smartphone models will be equipped with cutting-edge technology, Fitch Ratings says.

Android operating system market share, which stood at 56 percent in the first quarter of 2012 suggests that the perceived gap in terms of user-preference between Apple’s iOS and Android’s OS has narrowed significantly.

Samsung has amassed a record 10 million pre-orders for its latest Galaxy S3 model, which was launched on a global basis in June 2012. Fitch forecasts that Samsung will sell around 400 million mobile handsets during 2012, of which 220 million will be smartphones (2011: 330 million handsets, including 97 million smartphones).