Apple, Samsung Take Smartphone Lead Ahead of Huawei

Overall mobile phone sales dipped in 2012 for the first time since 2009, thanks to weak demand for feature phones. But smartphones helped make up the difference, increasing fourth-quarter sales by 38.3 percent compared to the same time period in 2011, according to stats from Gartner.

Not surprisingly, Apple and Samsung were the smartphone kings during the fourth quarter, but Chinese phone maker Huawei also saw a nice boost, reaching No. 3 on the list of top smartphone makers for the first time. In 2012 overall, Huawei sold 27.2 million smartphones, up 73.8 percent from the year before. That's expected to grow with the release of the Huawei Ascend D2 and the huge 6.1-inch Ascend Mate, which made their debut at CES this year.

International markets are key for Huawei's growth in 2013, as well as being able to improve its product mix to a higher tier, Gartner said.

Still, Apple and Samsung controlled 52 percent of the global smartphone market by the end of the fourth quarter, up from 46.4 percent in the third quarter. Samsung sold 64.5 million smartphones in the fourth quarter, up 85.3 percent from the same time period in 2011. Gartner said Apple sold 43.5 million iPhones during the quarter, though Apple put that figure at 47.8 million.

"The success of Apple and Samsung is based on the strength of their brands as much as their actual products," Anshul Gupta, principal research analyst at Gartner, said in a statement. "Their direct competitors, including those with comparable products, struggle to achieve the same brand appreciation among consumers, who, in a tough economic environment, go for cheaper products over brand."

On the mobile OS front, Android dominated the fourth quarter with 69.7 percent of the global market, up from 51.3 percent the year before. Apple's iOS came in No. 2 with 20.9 percent, down slightly from 23.6 percent. BlackBerry was in No. 3 with 3.5 percent, down from 8.8 percent in 2011, while Microsoft's Windows Phone platform was at 3 percent, up from 1.8 percent.

In the mobile phone market overall, Apple slipped to No. 3 behind Nokia. The Finnish company sold 85 million devices during the fourth quarter for 18 percent of the market, but that was down from 112 million and 23.4 percent in 2011. Nokia did see some pickup with sales of its low-cost Asha mobile phones, though, as well as "good response" to its new Windows Phone 8 Lumia phones, Gartner said.

"Analysts said that aside from the continued focus on Lumia, Nokia needs to build on momentum around Asha in 2013 by adding devices and apps to further enhance its overall value proposition and, in doing so, moving up the price point slightly to achieve better margins breaching the gap left by Symbian," according to Gartner.

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