Apple Became Top Smartphone Maker in 2011, Gartner Says

Record sales of the iPhone last year made Apple the biggest smartphone manufacturer in the world, according to Gartner, a research company. That makes Apple the third biggest vendor of cellphones over all, behind Nokia and Samsung. Apple got a big lift during the holiday season of 2011, in which it sold 37 million iPhones, the most it has sold in a single quarter. Since the smartphone’s debut in 2007, Apple has sold 183 million of the devices. In 2011, manufacturers shipped 472 million smartphones, which accounted for 31 percent of overall mobile device sales, according to Gartner.