Samsung outsold Apple in world smartphone arena

iPhone overtaken in 2011

Apple may have shipped more smartphones than Samsung in Q4, but the South Korean giant sold more of the gadgets during the year as a whole.

So says market watcher Strategy Analytics. Some 488.5m smartphones shipped out of manufacturers' warehouses during 2011, up from 299.5m in 2010. Exactly 19.9 per cent of them shipped with the Samsung name on the front.

Apple was not far behind: 19.0 per cent of the smartphones that shipped last year were iPhones.

Contrast that with 2010, when Apple accounted for 15.9 per cent of world smartphones shipments and Samsung just eight per cent.

Who lost as they gained? Nokia, of course: its market share plunged from 33.4 per cent in 2010 to 15.8 per cent in 2011, SA's figures show.

All the other vendors combined raised their share at Nokia's expense too.

Meanwhile, Apple remains the tablet top seller, but Samsung, along with other Android fondleslab purveyors, narrowed the gap during 2011. ®