Market share

Mobile phone subscribers per 100 inhabitants 1997–2007  

The world's largest individual mobile operator by subscribers is China Mobile with over 500 million mobile phone subscribers. Over 50 mobile operators have over 10 million subscribers each, and over 150 mobile operators have at least one million subscribers by the end of 2009 (source wireless intelligence). In February 2010, there were 4.6 billion mobile phone subscribers, a number that is estimated to grow.

Competitive forces emerged in the Asia Pacific (excluding Japan) region at Q3 2010 to the detriment of market leader Nokia. Brands such as Micromax, Nexian, and i-Mobile chipped away at Nokia's market share plus Android powered smartphones also gained momentum across the region at the cost of Nokia.

Based on IDC India, Nokia's market share dropped significantly to 36 percent in the second quarter, from 56.8 percent in the same quarter last year and further drop to 31.5 percent in the th ird quarter, reflecting the growing share of Chinese and Indian vendors of low-end mobile phones.

Based on IDC in the last quarter of 2010, RIM has been knocked out from the top five list global mobile phone sellers. The number one rank is still Nokia followed by Samsung, LG Electronics, ZTE and Apple. For the first time Chinese ZTE is among the top five list and mainly make of lower cost phones.

For the year of 2010, Sony Ericsson and Motorola are out from the top of five list and have been replaced by LG Electronics and Apple. Significant increase from 16.5 percent to 30.6 percent has been done by many small not yet recognized brands (some of them are new brands) – Others-2. Total sales in 2010 to end users were 1.6 billion units or increase by 31.8 percent from the year of 2009.

In Q1 2011, Apple surpassed Nokia as the world's top handset vendor in revenue and Nokia market share drop continuously to 29 percent in Q1 2011 as the lowest level since the late 1990s. In June 2011, Nokia has also announced that in Q2 2011 the sales and margins are expected to be much lower than anticipated due to global competition in both low-and-high end markets.

At April 6, 2011 market capitalization of HTC surpassed Nokia with $33.8 billion over $33.4 billion respectively. The credit agency was also downgraded Nokia's debt from A2 to A3.

Top Five Mobile Phone Market Share

• Source: Gartner & IDC, Q2-2011
• Note: Vendor shipments are branded shipments and exclude OEM sales for all vendors

By year-over-year at Q2, worldwide sales of mobile devices grew 16.5 percent, to reach 428.7 million units. Others still rose and achieved almost a half of market share.

June 2011: In 3 years, RIM has lossed about 82 percent of the capitalization. As a barometer in North America RIM's market share dropped significantly from 54 percent to 13 percent in the last 2 years.

Other manufacturers outside of Top Five include (June 2011 data) Research In Motion Ltd. (RIM), HTC Corporation, Motorola, Huawei,Sony Ericsson, while the following has very small market share each Audiovox (now UTStarcom), BenQ-Siemens, CECT, Fujitsu,Kyocera, Mitsubishi Electric, NEC, Panasonic, Palm, Pantech Wireless Inc., Philips, Qualcomm Inc., Sagem, Sanyo, Sharp, Sierra Wireless, Just5, SK Teletech, T&A Alcatel, Trium, Toshiba, Vidalco and so many China's, India's and Indonesia's brands. There are also specialist communication systems related to (but distinct from) mobile phones.

Media

In 1998, one of the first examples of selling media content through the mobile phone was the sale of ringtones by Radiolinja in Finland. Soon afterwards, other media content appeared such as news, videogames, jokes, horoscopes, TV content and advertising. Most early content for mobile tended to be copies of legacy media, such as the banner advertisement or the TV news highlight video clip. Recently, unique content for mobile has been emerging, from the ringing tones and ringback tones in music to "mobisodes," video content that has been produced exclusively for mobile phones.

In 2006, the total value of mobile-phone-paid media content exceeded Internet-paid media content and was worth 31 billion dollars (source Informa 2007). The value of music on phones was worth 9.3 billion dollars in 2007 and gaming was worth over 5 billion dollars in 2007.

The advent of media on the mobile phone has also produced the opportunity to identify and track Alpha Users or Hubs, the most influential members of any social community. AMF Ventures measured in 2007 the relative accuracy of three mass media, and found that audience measures on mobile were nine times more accurate than on the Internet and 90 times more accurate than on TV.

The mobile phone is often called the Fourth Screen (if counting cinema, TV and PC screens as the first three) or Third Screen (counting only TV and PC screens). It is also called the Seventh of the Mass Media (with Print, Recordings, Cinema, Radio, TV and Internet the first six).

Privacy

The movements of a mobile phone user can be tracked by their service provider and, if desired, by law enforcement agencies and their government. Both the SIM card and the handset can be tracked. China has proposed using this technology to track commuting patterns of Beijing city residents.