According to a new report recently released by Gartner (News - Alert), smartphone sales increased by 46.9 percent in the third quarter of 2012 as compared to the same period in 2011. While this is not especially surprising considering the massive boost in popularity these devices have seen worldwide over the last few years, the fact that smartphone sales managed this growth alongside an overall 3.1 percent drop in mobile phone sales demonstrates just how quickly smartphones are claiming mobile dominance.
In total, 169.2 million smartphones were sold during Q3, continuing the generally upward sales trend for these devices. Of course, Apple and Samsung (News - Alert) continue to dominate the smartphone market with a combined market share of 46.5 percent. Meanwhile, a handful of vendors have been vying for third place.
To put into perspective how volatile the smartphone market is aside from Samsung and Apple: Nokia (News - Alert) dropped from number three to number seven in the list of smartphone providers within the span of three months, while Research In Motion (RIM) and HTC rose to third and fourth respectively.
Of course the popularity of smartphones also means that technologies dependent on them will likely see growth as well. For example, VoLTE allows users to make cheap calls from any location with access to an LTE (News - Alert) data connection. Such technology is particularly useful for businesses as it can boost productivity while drastically reducing costs.
Gartner also recently released a report on the global platform as a service (PaaS) market which states that it is on pace to reach $1.2 billion by the end of 2012, up from $900 million in 2011. The market is expected to continue growth through 2016, at which time it will total $2.9 billion.
Earlier in November, Gartner named Ciber one of the visionaries for SAP (News - Alert) Application Management Service Providers among 14 other providers in the Visionaries quadrant.
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Edited by Rachel Ramsey