Samsung ships 43 million smartphones in Q1, dwarfs HTC and Motorola
Samsung and Apple are solidifying their positions as the number one and two smartphone vendors on the planet, according to a report from ABI Research. The two companies shipped 78 million handsets in the first quarter of the year, or 55 percent of the total, as big names like HTC, Motorola, Nokia, and RIM continue to backslide.
Apple shipped 35 million handsets in Q1 while Samsung shipped 43 million, powered by popular models like the Galaxy S II. The two companies also captured 90 percent of the market's global profits, according to ABI, and Samsung alone captured 29.7 percent of the total shipments.
Surprisingly, some of their gains come at the expense of two other big names: HTC and Motorola. Motorola slipped only a bit, from 5.4 million handsets in Q4 2011 to 5.1 million in Q1 2012. Michael Morgan, ABI's senior analyst for mobile devices, told Ars that the drop was "likely due to seasonality." Motorola had a handful of handset launches spanning last fall, including the Droid Razr (which was launched globally as the Motorola Razr), Photon 4G, and the Droid Bionic.