As noted by the Financial Times, Apple has officially passed Nokia to become the world's top smartphone vendor. Apple's rapid growth paired with a sharp drop in shipments for Nokia allowed Apple to turn a 5.5 million unit deficit during the first quarter into a 3.6 million unit lead in the second quarter.
Shipments of Nokia smartphones declined by 34 per cent to 16.7m units, compared with the 20.3m iPhones shipped by Apple in its second quarter.
Apple was already the biggest smartphone maker by revenue and profits, but the April-June period marked the first time it had surpassed Nokia in volume.
Apple has been climbing the rankings of top smartphone vendors as longtime leaders Nokia and Research in Motion have faded. Apple passed Research in Motion in global shipments back in the third quarter of last year, and rapidly closed the gap on Nokia to claim the lead this past quarter.
Apple has of course faced stiff competition from Android over the last couple of years, but with dozens of manufacturers pushing out Android devices, no single vendor has been able to approach Apple's shipment volumes. Samsung and HTC lead the Android pack and have experienced very strong growth, but each company's smartphone shipments remains about half that of Apple's.
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And as for their marriage with the devil - if Microsoft's history is anything to go by - Microsoft will leave with whatever technical gems Nokia has left; while Nokia will be left a dried-out husk. :(
On another note, it's almost scary how big Apple are becoming; and how influential they are in so many markets. They're now the second biggest company by market cap and could well be the biggest within 1-2 quarters. Great for them, scary for other PC, tablet, phone, music player manufacturers; OS developer, music retailer, video retailer etc..etc..
I think you are looking in the wrong direction. Samsung is behind Apple in smartphone sales, and Android is not a manufacturer.
I think people forget that Apple started with modest goals. They seem to think that if Apple isn't number 1 in any metric it's a massive fail for them. Shows you how expectations have changed since 2007.