Smartphones Outsold PCs for the First Time in 2010
We all knew this moment was coming. Smartphones are now selling faster than personal computers — and sales are only increasing.
Analytics firm IDC released a report on market data from the fourth quarter of 2010. It revealed that for the first time ever, smartphones outsold computers worldwide.
Smartphone sales at the end of 2010 saw an incredible 87 percent increase over the same period in 2009, while PC sales only rose 5.5 percent. This put smartphones over the top.
Computers are becoming increasingly less important to many people who have found that many of the common tasks they use a computer for – e-mail, social networking, video or music streaming, gaming – are possible on a much more portable smartphone device. Many people now upgrade their smartphone long before they buy a new computer.
Continuing its meteoric rise, Android smartphone numbers increased significantly, mostly due to wide acceptance from multiple manufacturers.
"Android continues to gain by leaps and bounds, helping to drive the smartphone market," said Ramon Llamas, senior research analyst with IDC's Mobile Phone Technology and Trends team, in a statement. "It has become the cornerstone of multiple vendors' smartphone strategies, and has quickly become a challenger to market leader Symbian."
Windows Phone 7 saw an obvious boost in sales simply because it launched in the fourth quarter of 2010. Symbian^3, another mobile operating system, fared well too, thanks to sales of Nokia phones worldwide. Despite industry-wide discontent with Nokia's business practices and operating system choices, Nokia remained the No. 1 manufacturer of smartphones in the world. Many experts believe this can't last for long because of customer dissatisfaction with its smartphones.
Apple ranked as the No. 2 smartphone manufacturer, thanks to the popularity of the iPhone , followed by the godfather of the smartphone market, Research in Motion (maker of BlackBerry phones). Samsung and HTC reached fourth and fifth place thanks to their adoption of Android . Both manufacturers have released multiple smartphone models that have sold well in recent months.
