Apple: World’s Largest Smartphone Vendor
Another notch in Apple’s belt. The iPhone maker has finally overtaken Nokia as the world’s biggest smartphone vendor.
Posting abysmal second-quarter earnings this morning, Nokia reported smartphone shipments that slid 34 percent to 16.7 million units, and in doing so, forfeited its title as world’s largest smartphone manufacturer by volume. Apple, which became the world’s largest handset vendor by revenue in the first quarter of 2011 (again overtaking Nokia to claim that title), shipped 20.3 million iPhones in its second quarter.
Until today, Nokia had dominated the smartphone market for about 15 years after essentially creating it with the Nokia 9000 Communicator in 1996.
An astonishing upheaval in the global smartphone landscape — more so because Apple managed it in under five years. With a single smartphone.