NPD: 6 Smartphones Make Q3 Top 10 List

By Joseph Palenchar On Dec 7 2009 - 8:00am

Smartphones accounted for six of the top 10 cellphones sold to consumers in the third quarter, thanks to carriers' price reductions and buy-one-get-one (BOGO) free offers, The NPD Group found in surveying consumers.

Price reductions helped push the Blackberry Curve, iPhone 3GS and iPhone 3G to the top of the third-quarter list in unit sales to consumers, excluding sales to corporations and enterprises, the company said.

“Carriers have been heavily promoting the latest advanced handsets, which has spurred recent growth in the smartphone market and an increase the number of smartphone brands available to consumers,” said Ross Rubin, NPD's industry analysis director. “For example, while there was only one Android device available in the fourth quarter of last year, now there are eight available from three major carriers.”

Smartphones did not increase their share of unit sales to consumers on a sequential basis in the third quarter, but their share was up from the year-ago quarter's 23 percent, NPD found. “There has been such a tremendous runup [in smartphone sales] in the past few years that the market may have taken a breather in advance of many new devices coming in the fourth quarter,” Rubin added.

Smartphone price competition helped push down the average price of all cellphones sold to consumers by 3 percent to $85 compared to the year-ago quarter, NPD also found.