Despite their shares being rated as “junk,” Sony has stunned the telecommunication market by jumping three places in the global smartphone sales rankings according to the IDC.Pushing out HTC, RIM and Nokia, Sony, who took over the operations of their phone division after its divorce from Ericsson, is now a real threat to Taiwanese Company HTC and European phone maker Nokia, who are desperately trying to get traction with a range of Windows 8 phones.
In the latest rankings Samsung posted a massive leap from 22.7 per cent to 31.3 per cent, while Apple went from 13.8 to 14.6 per cent of the overall market.
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According to new research from IDC, the Japanese company made the gains in Q3 2012. The bad news is that Sony’s market share actually fell, year-on-year, from 5.0 per cent in 2011, to 4.8 per cent in 2012. It’s just that HTC, Nokia and RIM fell further.
In further evidence that Nokia is struggling in the smartphone market the European Company slipped dramatically from a 13.6 per cent hold in 2011 to just 3.4 per cent in 2012. HTC dropped from 10.3 per cent to 4.6 per cent, while RIM dropped from 9.6 per cent to 4.2 per cent.
Analysts claim that what has helped Sony is the rebranding of their Android handsets like the Xperia S and Xperia T.
The company is expecting a big bump in 2013, with the rumoured 1080p “Odin” handset set to compete at the top end of the market.
