Sony rises into smartphone top three; Nokia & HTC lose out big time
Sony Mobile seems to have turned the corner, or at least figured out which corner needs to be turned! The company is now comfortably in the third spot in the smartphone sales rankings. This has been established in the latest research from IDC, which states that in Q3’12, Sony holds a 4.8% market share in the global smartphone market. This puts it solidly in third place, behind Samsung and Apple.
It is interesting to note that this market share percentage is down from 5% at the corresponding stage in 2011, but Sony has risen most because of the fall of Nokia and HTC. Nokia’s quarter on quarter market share dropped from 13.6% to 3.4%, while HTC dropped from 10.3% to 4.7%. RIM’s market share also fell, from 9.6% to 4.2%. For the top two, Samsung saw an increase from 22.7% to 31.3%, while Apple improved from 13.8% to 14.6%.
Clearly, Sony’s rise is partly because of the interesting Android phones it made this year, and partly because of the decline of Nokia and HTC. From the figures mentioned earlier, Sony’s market share actually fell slightly, but Nokia’s and HTC’s fell more. But there is absolutely no way that we can take anything away from the fact that after the divorce with Ericsson, Sony Mobile has rebranded itself rather well.
The NXT range of Android phones were very impressive, particularly the Xperia S. The branding it got in the Bond movie, Skyfall, didn’t do any harm either. But the bigger tasks lie ahead, in 2013, when the much rumored “Odin” flagship phone is unveiled.