Apple tops smartphone market in Q4 - study

Apple topped the smartphone market in fourth quarter as it shipped 37 million iPhones with a sequential growth rate of 117 percent, according to a study by ABI Research. Apple's results made it the number one smartphone OEM in the quarter and for the year. The fourth quarter totalled 150 million smartphones shipped, representing a record high penetration of 36 percent of the 409 million total handsets shipped worldwide. Despite Samsung's 33 million shipments as the head Android OEM, Apple's iPhone 4S outpaced Samsung's highly coveted 280 percent year-over-year smartphone growth. At the low-end of the Android spectrum, Chinese handset OEMs Huawei and ZTE showed strong growth with 6.6 and 4.5 million units shipped respectively. The overall handset market increased 5.4 percent sequentially and 11.4 percent for the year reaching 1.54 billion shipments. The smartphone market delivered 28.6 percent sequential growth, 48.6 percent quarter-over-quarter and 57.4 percent year-over-year with the 2011 total reaching 473 million shipments. Nokia and Samsung retained the top positions in Q4 and 2011 for total handsets shipped, which bumped LG to fourth in Q4 and 2011. Despite RIM's recent troubles in the smartphone market, weakness in the feature phone sector pushed RIM from ninth to seventh largest handset vendor overall in Q4.