Dubai:  Mobile phones sales to end users in Middle East and Africa (MEA) totalled 39.52 million units in the third quarter of 2010, an increase of 22.88 per cent from 32.17 million in the third quarter of last year.

"Smartphone market has grown nearly 65 per cent from last year which indicates the market is healthy. This quarter saw RIM and Android drive record smartphone sales. Apple's share of the smartphone market fell drastically while Android volumes also grew rapidly making it the No 2 operating system regionally and worldwide," Annette Zimmermann, Senior Research Analyst, Mobile Devices Technology and Service Provider Research at Gartner, told Gulf News.

Smartphones accounted for 11 per cent of the total sales in the region while globally it accounted for 19.3 per cent of overall mobile phone sales in the third quarter.

Smartphone sales in the region stood at 4.33 million compared to 2.63 million units in third quarter of 2009.

Although the top three mobile device manufacturers Nokia, Samsung and Sony Ericsson remained the same, albeit with reduced market share — the third quarter saw Alcatel rise into the top five manufacturers list.

She said that in addition to the strong growth of smartphone sales, increasing sales of white-box products drove sales of mobile phones upward once again.

"In the third quarter, strong shipments of white-box manufacturers from China and India continued to expand their reach beyond their boundaries. Micromax, Intex and Tfive together contributed 15 per cent to the total sales. Low-cost devices from these vendors have made strong inroads into the region, especially in the UAE," she said.

White-box sales

The rise of white-box manufacturers also helped the ‘Others' section, as a proportion of overall sales, increasing its market share to 19.9 per cent in the third quarter of 2010. This is having a profound effect on the top five mobile handset manufacturers' combined share that dropped from 90.5 per cent in the third quarter of 2009 to 80 per cent in the third quarter of 2010.

Alcatel has seen a strong growth in the region right from the second quarter due to its low-cost devices. In the second quarter and third quarter it had a market share of 1.6 per cent.

"We firmly believe this phenomenon will not be short-lived as we still see a continued need for non-3G devices. Although we have seen acceleration in sales this quarter, we expect to see same volume in the fourth quarter of 2010," she said.

Android has really lifted the smartphones segment. Even though it is a mere 5.1 per cent in the third quarter, the year-on-year growth stood a whopping 3,575 per cent growth compared to third quarter of last year.

Symbain still rules the roost with 85.1 per cent market share — albeit with reduced market share. RIM also made a substantial gain in market share from 4.4 per cent compared to 2.6 per cent market share in the third quarter of last year.

Microsoft and Apple lost a substantial market share in the third quarter.

But with the launch of Windows Phone 7, Microsoft is expected to gain some market share in the fourth quarter of this year.

"We have tested the new operating system and we are quite positive about Windows Phone 7. They have very high-end features which are suited for high-end smartphones. Despite some shortcomings, we expect Microsoft to rectify them in the next release. The platform is good for enterprise users. It will have a wide appeal but not as good as Apple iPhone," she said.

About 156m handsets to be sold this year

Dubai Due to the strong growth expected due to the holiday season, Gartner has revised its full-year forecast for the Middle East and Africa.

Annette Zimmermann, Senior Research Analyst, Mobile Devices Technology and Service Provider Research at Gartner, said, the total handset volume for the whole year is revised from 144.55 million to 156 million units, an increase by 24.8 per cent compared to 125 million in 2009. Total smartphone shipments are expected to be 16.5 million, an increase of 37.5 per cent compared to 12 million in 2009.

The total handset volume in fourth quarter is expected to rise around 6.5 per cent quarter-on-quarter to 42 million in MEA of which 5 million is expected to be smartphones.

She said the average selling price will come down further in fourth quarter as the competition increases and with more Android and Windows 7 mobile operating system hitting the market, she said.

"Android and RIM are expected to gain more market share in this quarter and definitely Android will become the second largest operating system after Symbian, both regionally and globally. But Symbian is expected to hold the same market share as in the third quarter," she said.

"Globally, looking ahead to the fourth quarter, year-end demand for mobile handsets will support continued sales growth. Similar to the previous quarter, the fourth quarter market for mobile phones is continuing to increase. In the mobile phone industry in the third quarter, Samsung sold 71.4 million handsets during the third quarter. Samsung expects to sell over 20 million smartphones in 2010 and will aim to double its sales of smartphones in 2011," Kyung Tae Bae, President & CEO of Samsung Middle East and North Africa Head, said.

He said the Window Phone 7 handset is known as the Omnia 7 mobile phone which comes equipped with a 4-inch Amoled touchscreen, Qualcomm Snapdragon 1GHz processor for computing and a 5-megapixel auto-focus camera with an LED flash. This Microsoft based phone can be expected to launch in this region first quarter of 2011.

The new trend which we are seeing in the market is the tablets. More vendors are coming out with tablets. This year, she said we expect around 19.5 million media tablets to be sold this year globally and less than a million in the Middle East and Africa. Next year we are expecting 54 million shipments globally.

She said both iPad and Samsung Galaxy are highly priced and "we expect lower priced tablets hitting the market next year with bigger screen sizes".