Hardware

Smartphones sales on the up in Q1

(REGISTER HARDWARE) - Global smartphone sales grew by 12.7 per cent during the first quarter this year, but at the expense of a 9.4 per cent dip in sales of less advanced handsets, market watcher Gartner has concluded.

Over 36.4m smartphones were sold during Q1, although traditional talkers still outperformed more the advanced models with total sales of 269.1m during the same period.

However, buyers of HTC’s G1, the iPhone and their ilk helped push up smartphone sales and the group represented 13.5 per cent of all mobile sales during Q1, compared 11 per cent in Q1 2008.

“Much of the smartphone growth during the first quarter of 2009 was driven by touchscreen products”, said Gartner principal analyst Robert Cozza.

Gartner has identified two smartphone genres. An entry-level smartphone that’s “closer to an enhanced phone in specification” and which has an open OS, such as Nokia’s N76 – reviewed here.

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