The iPhone’s popularity has been so sweeping and universal that it’s managed to lift Apple, a company that only makes smartphones, into the No. 4 spot in worldwide mobile phone sales.
As Enterprise Mobile Today reports, Apple’s ascent can only mean good things for smartphone vendors and application developers that have their hands on the pulse of the consumer and enterprise mobility market.
In the quarter, Apple shipped 14.1 million iPhones, up from 7.4 million units in the year-ago quarter and good enough to secure 4.1 percent of the world mobile phone market. Keep in mind, these figures include both smartphones and traditional handsets.
The worldwide mobile phone market grew another 14.6 percent in the third quarter and no single manufacturer benefitted more from this fervent demand than Apple.
According to IT market research firm IDC, Apple (NASDAQ: AAPL) now ranks as the fourth-largest mobile phone manufacturer, placing it just ahead of Research In Motion (NASDAQ: RIMM) but still well behind handset veterans Nokia, Samsung and LG Electronics.
Still, for a company that’s so new to the industry — the first iPhone was released in 2007 — the growth is nothing short of spectacular and serves as a harbinger of things to come in the wireless communications and mobile phone industries.
