Samsung has seen an unprecedented gain in their share of the UK smart phone market over the past six months. According to Mobile magazine, their share has gone from 4% to 16.5% in the past six months mainly at the expense of rivals HTC and Nokia. HTC’s share dropped from 19.1% to 17.7% whereas Nokia’s went from 16% to 15.7% as it fell behind Samsung.
Much of Samsung’s growth can be attributed to the release of the Galaxy S II. It is widely considered the best handset around as far as Android-powered phones are concerned. It will be interesting though to see what inroads Nokia and HTC make with regard to their Windows Phone handsets.
One company that wasn’t even mentioned in that story, Research in Motion, has seen their woes go from bad to worse. Following a disappointing set of results for Q1 of the year, the Blackberry manufacturer announced that it would be cutting around 2,000 jobs. That represents around 11% of the workforce and is in addition to the firm restructuring senior management.
A statement read, “The workforce reduction is believed to be a prudent and necessary step for the long-term success of the company.
“It follows an extended period of rapid growth within the company whereby the workforce had nearly quadrupled in the last five years alone.”
COO Don Morrison retires as part of those places, Thorsten Heins taking over the expanded COO, product and sales role. The job losses are thought to be so that the company can keep itself financially sound. It’s also another indication of just how badly they are taking a beating in the smart phone market.
