A new study says that smartphones are still claiming territory in the cell phone market, but thanks to the struggling economy, growth dropped to its slowest pace during the fourth quarter 2008. Nokia—still the dominant manufacturer—took the most significant market share hit, as RIM, Apple, and even Samsung are landing in more pockets than ever.
Gartner's study, which covers worldwide smartphone stats for the last quarter of 2008, says that sales reached 38.1 million units, which is up just 3.7 percent from the year-ago quarter in 2007. For contrast, third quarter smartphones sales (preholiday) were up 11.5 percent over their 2007 equivalent. Gartner says that the third quarter 2008 saw a number of promising new smartphone announcements, but continuing economic troubles and prohibitively expensive data plans led to Q4's significant drop in growth. Market share musical chairs is still in effect among smartphone manufacturers, though, as Nokia continued to lose ground to feisty competition.
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