Smartphone Explosion

The latest IDC survey of phone shipments has shown that the European smartphone sector has grown by 48% to 21.8 million units in 2011 while feature phones were down 29% to 20.4 million units shipped in the same period. This is the first time ever that smartphone shipments have outstripped feature phone shipments and shows that smartphone adoption is rapidly increasing in consumer markets.

Samsung are currently the top vendor for smartphones and are the most representative Android manufacturer. Nokia has suffered a dramatic decline in its fortunes and it’ll be tough for it to recover from a year on year drop of 44% in shipments. HTC are another Android manufacturer doing well with RIM, the makers of BlackBerry devices polling 5th in the table. While Nokia is down significantly it’s still got a large chunk of the market. So what are Nokia customers waiting on? Is it the new iPhone 5 or have you hopes for Nokia-Microsoft partnership? Let us know your thoughts below in the comments section or on twitter @Irish_technews.