Considering that Apple [AAPL] launched the first iPhone just under three years ago, and until then hadn’t made any mobile phones, the position they are in now is pretty impressive.
According to Gartner, the iPhone was the third most popular selling smartphone platform of 2009, taking 14.4 percent of all smartphone sales of the year, ahead of the iPhone were RIM and Symbian.
Last year was a big year for Apple and the iPhone with a massive 24.9 million iPhone sold, with the last quarter being the best when the company sold a record 8.7 million iPhones.
Apple sells just two models of the iPhone, the 3G and 3GS, when you compare this to Symbian and RIM who have many different models for sale on their platforms this is pretty impressive.
It will be interesting to see how Apple performs over the next couple of years, if their sales of the iPhone continue to grow as fast as they have since the first generation iPhone was launched I am sure it wont be long before they take the top spot in smartphone sales.
via Apple Insider