Adoption of Apple iPhone devices has continued its steady acceleration and has seen the manufacturer take the lead in the smartphone sector for the first time.
A new study conducted by analytics firm ABI Research indicates 37 million iPhones shipped in the final three months of 2011.
It was noted this is a 117 per cent sequential increase and a 128 per cent rise on the previous quarter.
This means Apple has become the number one original equipment manufacturer (OEM) for the year, as well as the three month period.
In total, 150 million smartphones were shipped worldwide, which is a record high of 36 per cent of the 409 million total mobile handsets.
"It is important to note that if smartphones are taken out of the equation, the remainder of the handset market showed a year-on-year shipment decline of 1.6 per cent, signifying that market growth is entirely dependent on smartphones," said senior analyst for ABI Michael Morgan.
Samsung boasted 33 million shipments with a 280 per cent year-on-year growth, but this was still outpaced by Apple's iPhone 4S.
"The mid-tier Android OEMs showed weakness in Q4 and Samsung was not able to maintain Android's growth on the one hand and fight Apple with the other," commented vice-president of mobile devices for ABI Kevin Burden.
Further success could continue to be experienced in 2012, as it has been suggested the iPhone 5 could be due for release this summer.
Unofficial specialist news provider 9to5Mac recently reported an insider at motherboard manufacturer Foxconn told it the latest version of the flagship device is in production.
It was speculated the manufacturing patterns of previous models have been characterised by a five month lead time and a larger screen size is also a possibility, as the latest design is said to be four inches across.
Posted by Helen Jenkins