Market research firm IDC has just released their quarterly report on the top selling smartphones (or “converged mobile devices”, as they call them) in the US for the fourth quarter of 2009. RIM and Apple dominate the list in an almost absurd manner, but a few welcome surprises managed to sneak their way in.
Want to test your mobile expertise? Make a mental list of what you’d wager were the best selling phones at the end of 2009, and then click through to see how many you got right.
Top 10 Best Selling Phones of Q4 2009:
- RIM – BlackBerry Curve
- Apple – iPhone 3G S
- Motorola – DROID
- Apple – iPhone 3G
- RIM – BlackBerry Pearl
- RIM – BlackBerry Bold
- RIM – BlackBerry Storm
- Palm – Pre
- RIM – BlackBerry Tour
- T-Mobile – myTouch 3G
RIM absolutely dominates the list, snatching up more than half of the slots for themselves. Apple follows close behind on two counts: they’ve got the second best selling handset, and they’re the only other manufacturer with more than one handset in the top 10. The Motorola Droid continues to pave the way for Android in the mainstream, securing a higher spot on the list (#3) than any other Android handset has in the past.
It’s important to note that this list only represents vendor sales, and not consumer sales. In other words: if a third party vendor ordered 500,000 units but only actually managed to sell 400,000 to end-users, it’s still counted as 500,000 sales. It’s an inevitable weakness of studies like this, considering how secretive carriers tend to be with their handset numbers.