Financial Times, Wall Street Journal, Dagens Industri, Dagens Nyheter

Comment: News based on press release.

GLOBAL HANDSET SALES UP 35 PERCENT IN THE QUARTER - ANDROID EATS INTO NOKIA’S SMARTPHONE LEAD
According to Gartner, sales of low-cost Chinese mobiles contributed to a sharp rise in handset sales in emerging markets in the third quarter. The growth of unbranded, or “white box”, phones caused the combined market share of the world's five largest handset vendors to drop to 67 percent, compared with 83 percent a year earlier. Overall, shipments of phones increased 35 percent from a year earlier to 417 million units, Gartner said. Smartphone sales almost doubled in the third quarter over last year, from 41 million units to 81 million, accounting for 19.3 percent of total handset sales in the period. The Android platform was found in 25.5 percent of the more than 400 million smartphones sold, compared with just 3.5 percent a year ago. As Android grew, Nokia saw its share of the smartphone market slip from 44.6 percent to 36.6 percent. Nokia remained the number one global handset maker in Q3, however, while Sony Ericsson landed at sixth place. Gartner expects global handset sales for 2010 to increase by 30 percent over last year. DI writes that recent statistics from IT Research Sweden show an eight-percent increase in domestic mobile sales in Q2 2010. Smartphone sales in Sweden went up by 411 percent, mostly due to the iPhone.