Nokia today announced that it had sold just over 100 million cellphones this spring, extending its dominance of the global cellphone business. The results were a 29 percent jump over the same period last year and gave the Finnish company a record 37 percent of the 273 million cellphones sold worldwide. Much of the growth was on the back of strong smatphone sales, the company said: over 9 million N-series and 2 million E-series were sold, with specific devices such as the 5-megapixel N95 cameraphone faring especially well.
The demographics set the context for Apple’s introduction of the iPhone during the same timeframe. Its sales reached 270,000 units during the initial launch, or just a tenth of one percent of the total cellphone market during the same period. Apple chief Steve Jobs also projected that the company will sell about 10 million iPhones by the end of 2008, or about 1 percent of the market as it was in 2006.