According to the latest study made by Gartner, Samsung is currently the world’s second handset manufacturer, ending the second quarter with a 19.3% market share. Overcoming by far LG and recording a slight improve on Nokia, Samsung sold 55.4m of units, which means a 14% quarter-on-quarter rise.
Figures in the USA and Canada are even better. Samsung corners there the 24% of the market thanks to the success of the Instinct, Jack and Impression series.
Furthermore, the company’s outlook shows the best is yet to come. Strategy Analytics forecasted that the South Korean will end 2009 with a market share over 20%, as well as with 117.8m of units shipped during the second half of the year.
These good figures aren’t there by a fluke. Samsung has been for long not only at the front of the market but in innovation.
It was a bushwhacker offering cellular featuring touch screens, selling more than 10m of such models during 2008 and recording a major success with the F480 TouchWiz, which has sold more than 5m of units since May 2008.
The same happens with cameras. Samsung’s expertise in photography is well-known all over the world, so is not strange that the South Korean launched Memoir, the first handset featuring an 8MP camera, and only months later even improve this resolution up to 12MP with one of its latest releases, the Samsung Pixon12.
Last February, during the Mobile World Congress, Samsung showcased what’s going to be its big bid for the next year: the AM-OLED displays. This new technology provides sharper colours and less energy consumption, and it has been key to the good criticism that surrounded the company’s most outstanding releases so far, the Omnia HD and the UltraTouch S8300.
Up to today, only Nokia and Sony Ericsson are working with AM-OLED displays in some of their models, but Samsung has already eight models with this technology available and plans to launch ten more before the end of the year. If AM-OLED gets to be the standard someday soon, that will mean a big victory for Samsung, as it owns the 97% of this technology’s worldwide production.
Although the distance is still huge, there’s no runner-up that keeps happy with this place for long. Samsung is also investing in improving processors and has been the first manufacturer of the world’s top three that has launched a model with Google’s Android within it. Moreover, it highlights to try to make the best out of the expansion of 3G in China, consolidating its Application Store in Europe and keep betting hard on Android as its main aims for the near future. Will this be enough to cut Nokia down to size? Maybe not for now, but for sure it can place the company in a great spot if the AM-OLED revolution doesn’t take too long.
Tags: Samsung Phone