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SAN JOSE,
Calif. — Apple Inc.’s record 37 million iPhones sold
in the last quarter of 2011 made it the world’s
leading smartphone vendor for the quarter, barely
topping rival Samsung Electronics Co., an analysis firm
reported Friday.
Samsung
sold 36.5 million smartphones in the final three months
of 2011, Strategy Analytics reported, slightly below
Apple’s total. Those sales figures gave Apple 23.9
percent of the market and Samsung 23.5 percent of the
market for the quarter.
The
quarter proved to be the biggest in history for
smartphone sales, with total units sold reaching 155
million. For the year, nearly half a billion smartphones
— 488 million — were sold worldwide, another record.
Apple
couldn’t stage a comeback in Strategy’s yearly
figures, as Samsung sold 97.4 million smartphones for
the entire year, topping Apple’s 2011 total of 93
million.
“With
global smartphone shipments nearing half a billion units
in 2011, Samsung is now well positioned alongside Apple
in a two-horse race at the forefront of one of the
world’s largest and most valuable consumer electronics
markets,” Neil Mawston, executive director at Strategy
Analytics, said in the company’s news release.
Apple has
sued Samsung in several countries, claiming that its
devices, powered by Google’s Android operating system,
infringe on the Cupertino, Calif., company’s patents.
Samsung commercials for its Galaxy line of smartphones,
meanwhile, poke fun at Apple and its fans.
Third in
both the yearly and quarterly figures was 2010’s
leader in sales, Nokia, Strategy reported.
Apple’s
large sales figure at the end of 2011 also helped its
mobile operating system, iOS, overtake Android as the
dominant mobile operating system for smartphones in the
U.S. in the fourth quarter, an earlier report said.
Research firm Kantar Worldpanel ComTech reported
Wednesday that Apple’s share of the U.S. market
reached 44.9 percent in the quarter, a fingernail ahead
of Android’s 44.8 percent
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