Global legitimate handset shipments grew 10% annually in Q4 2011. The growth was driven by surging demand for 3G and 4G phones. Samsung was the world's largest WCDMA and LTE vendor, as sales of the Galaxy portfolio soared.

Apple crushed several rivals to capture second place in the CDMA category with just three CDMA carriers footprint globally, while HTC lost 5 points of 3G marketshare in just one quarter due to a lack of hit models. Meanwhile, ZTE & Huawei dominated the TD-SCDMA sub-segment prevalent in their home market.

Nokia remained the king of 2G GSM segment with rising demand for its low-cost dual SIM 2G feature  phones across emerging markets.

Want a deeper dive into vendor rankings and shipment volumes by technology?

Strategy Analytics provides quarterly handset shipments by protocol for the top 30 global vendors from 2001 to 2011. Key technologies covered include 2G GSM, 3G UMTS, iDEN, CDMA, TD-SCDMA and 4G LTE. This can be found in the following report:

VENDOR SHARE: Global Handset Market by Technology: Q4 2011