IDC released its Worldwide Phone Tracker Report for the first quarter of this year. The world market is growing nearly 20%, with 371.8 million units shipped and 19.8% growth over last year.
In the United States, Apple's iPhone 4 and the 4G LTE HTC ThunderBolt, two smartphones introduced at Verizon Wireless, help fuel the smartphone market. Feature phones, including once popular quick-messaging devices, continued to lose ground. IDC predicts that smartphones will Increasingly drive market growth.Smartphone-specific vendors, such as HTC, continued to see sales grow quickly.
The top world mobile-phone vendors were Nokia (29.2%), Samsung (18.8%), LG (6.6%), Apple (5.0%), and ZTE (4.1%). Nokia smartphone sales received a luke-warm reception. Samsung shipments were mainly comprised of feature phones, while smartphones were one-fifth of its volume. LG shipments were lower than last year, with hopes of a better third quarter from sales of the LG Revolution. Apple had record quarter shipments, buoyed by strong Verizon iPhone 4 sales. ZTE did well in China and Latin America with low-cost feature phones.