Portable Electronics Ltd // Technology you can carry.

Samsung has announced that it has broken the 1m sales barrier for the Galaxy S II in South Korea, smashing sales records in the process.

Samsung actually sold 1.3m GSII units in May, Shin says; the original Galaxy S took 70 days to reach the 1m mark.

Reported by Android Community

Worldwide mobile communication device sales to end users totaled 427.8 million units in the first quarter of 2011, an increase of 19 percent from the first quarter of 2010, according to Gartner, Inc. Smartphones continued to outpace the rest of the market, and a newly competitive mid-tier smartphone market will drive smartphones into mass adoption and accelerate this trend.

Hugo Barra, Product Management Director of Android, announced a few outstanding numbers at Google I/0:

Samsung Galaxy S2 Has Reached the Mark of 3,000,000 Pre-orders Globally

Samsung Electronics’ flagship smartphone Galaxy S II is becoming a global buzzword right after its release. Samsung Electronics said that its newest smartphone Galaxy S ll has reached 3,000,000 pre-orders globally as of the end of April.

The worldwide smartphone market grew 79.7% year over year in the first quarter of 2011 (1Q11), driven by a combination of vendors releasing highly anticipated models, widespread availability of older smartphones at lower prices, and sustained end-user demand.

Canalys today released its worldwide country-level smart phone market data for Q1 2011, revealing that Android led the market for the second quarter running, and, with 35.7 million units shipped, increased its share to 35%. At the same time, Canalys confirmed that Asia Pacific (APAC) became the largest smart phone market region, with year-on-year growth of 98% to 37.3 million units, putting it ahead of Europe, the Middle East and Africa (EMEA) for the first time since Q3 2007.

A number of smaller handset vendors are rushing to launch low-priced (sub US$150) Android handsets targeting users in emerging markets in 2011, with related shipments forecast to reach 20-25 million units this year. The shipment total represents up to tenfold growth on 2010 shipments, and the segment will account for 12.1-15.1% of overall Android handset shipments, according to a recently published Digitimes Research Special Report.

During their Q1 earnings call, Google’s Jeff Huber provided said the number of devices activated daily equals some 350,000 handsets. And with all of these activations the number of app installs from the Android Market have increased by 50 percent since the final quarter of 2010. App installs now sit at 3 billion.

Google’s Android OS is forecast to increase its worldwide share of the media tablet market from 20 percent in 2011 to 39 percent in 2015 (see Table 1). Analysts said Google’s decision not to open up the Honeycomb, its first OS version dedicated to tablets, to third parties will prevent fragmentation, but it will also slow the price decline and ultimately cap market share.

Table 1
Worldwide Sales of Media Tablets to End Users by OS (Thousands of Units)

According to statistics from IDC Australia, 12.74 million mobiles were sold last year, a sharp increase from 10.99 million in 2009. The research house combines mobile phone sales from two categories: smartphones and feature phones.

Smartphones accounted for around 57 per cent of mobile phones sold last year, up from 36.4 per cent in 2009, IDC telecommunications analyst Mark Novosel said.

In coming months Google Android will unseat Nokia's Symbian as the leading smartphone platform in Australia, IDC predicts.