2011 belonged to iPhone 4S. Will Nokia Lumia rule 2012?

The dumb phone aka the plain, old cellphone market is slowing down according to research firm Gartner, which just released results for mobile phone sales trends in the final quarter of 2011. According to the research firm

Expectations for 2012 are for the overall market to grow by about 7 percent, while smartphone growth is expected to slow to around 39 percent.

So which were the trend-setters in the 2011 mobile phone market? The biggest gainer it seems has been thebig daddy of all tech companies, Apple, which recently posted blockbuster results in the final quarter and gave some cheer to Wall Street as Apple shares recently touched a record high of $500. The Gartner report confirms that Apple’s iPhone 4S has been a big hit with the company selling 35.5 million handsets.

Smartphone volumes during the fourth quarter rose due to record sales of Apple iPhones. As a result, Apple became the third-largest mobile phone vendor in the world, overtaking LG. Apple also became the world’s top smartphone vendor, with a market share of 23.8 percent in the fourth quarter of 2011, and the top smartphone vendor for 2011 as a whole, with a 19 percent market share.

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Of course these blockbuster sales only took place in America and Western Europe. With China and India still not fully explored and millions of Apple fans hoping for an increased presence of the tech firm in these regions, Apple has no place to go but up if it does enter the Asian markets with some reduced pricing.

[caption id=“attachment_214398” align=“alignleft” width=“380” caption=“The iPhone 4S has been the biggest hit of 2012. Getty Images”]  [/caption]

The Apple vs Samsung,rivalrywhich is also connected to the Apple vs Android/Googlerivalryis only growing stronger according to the report. In the smartphone market Android devices sales to end users by vendors have grown faster than iOS, by nearly 20 percent. This is up from 30.5 percent in the fourth quarter of 2010 to 50.9 percent in the fourth quarter of 2011.What it means is that Android is still kicking Apple’s butt in terms of growth, even though iOS device sales have increased by 23.5 compared to 15.8 last year, which though a big number is still nowhere close to Android.

Perhaps the biggest loser in this year’s results is BlackBerry maker Research in Motion, RIM, which dropped to number 7 this year, well below ZTE, LG and Huawei, as far as sales were concerned in the fourth quarter. Clearly even fast-growing markets like India, where the BB still has some aspirational value for a lot of the middle-class users- because BlackBerry was ’the’ smartphone to have at one time- has not helped it stay ahead of relative late comers like LG.

With Samsung - which is number two after Nokia as far as mobile device sales were concerned for all of 2011- stating that they want to grab 60 percent of the market in India --RIM’s hold over India might not last so long. It’s clear from the research data that Samsung has been gainly steadily thanks to Android. Recently RIM has been showing signs that it is trying to take charge of its dwindling market share - by announcing the launch of OS 10 smartphones in India . Will OS10 prove to end the Android juggernaut, at least in India? With the current numbers, it looks unlikely.

But the most important thing in the report, other than Apple and Android going up, is that good old Nokia is still number one as far as market share goes for mobiles sold in the fourth quarter of 2011. For a lot of customers, a basic Nokia cellphone is still better than any smartphone primarily because of the phone’s ability to withstand all sorts of rough usage. Will Nokia’s Lumia 800-a Windows platform phone, that’s got some mild reviews - prove to be a tough competitor in the smartphone market? That will only be revealed by mid-2012. For now you can check out the complete results of the study here.