Republished with permission from Mobile Enterprise.

Infonetics Research this week released excerpts from its “2G/3G/4G (LTE and WiMAX) Broadband Devices and Subscribers” report for the second quarter of 2011.

Key findings of the report, which tracks smartphones, mobile broadband PC cards, embedded mobile broadband cards and devices, mobile broadband routers, and mobile broadband subscribers, include the following:

  • 14 million mobile broadband-enabled tablets (e.g. Apple iPad, Motorola Xoom, BlackBerry PlayBook, HP TouchPad, etc.) were sold worldwide in the second quarter of 2011, an increase of 80 percent over the first quarter.
  • $31.4 billion was spent on smartphones in the second quarter of 2011, down 1.4 percent from the previous quarter despite shipments being up about 2 percent.
  • Infonetics expects global smartphone revenue to grow 31 percent in 2011 over 2010, to $117 billion.
  • Apple held 36 percent of the smartphone market in the second quarter, with HTC and Samsung following in second and third place, respectively.
  • Android continues to be the leading smartphone operating system worldwide, used in nearly half of all smartphones shipped.

“The clear synergy between smartphones and tablets, with their shared touchscreen features and common application environments, make them by far the hottest segments of the mobile broadband device market,” Richard Webb, directing analyst for microwave and small cells at Infonetics Research, said in a statement. “Just as iPhone users are more likely to buy an iPad as their tablet, so too are Android users more likely to buy Android-based tablets. It is increasingly important for vendors to have a strong portfolio in both market segments to leverage this synergy.”

Read more at Mobile Enterprise (subscription required).

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