After a busy month for Apple, HTC & Samsung it’s time for another new Hot Handset list. July saw 3 of the biggest handsets go head to head with each other, but with limited supply and numerous problems reported with iPhone 4, it was going to be interesting to see which handset came out on top. This month there are three new entries into the top ten, with the other handsets staying pretty static. Here’s how the handsets ranked for July. (Previous month’s position is shown in brackets)
iPhone is back on top
- (2) iPhone 4
- (1) HTC Desire
- (2) iPhone 3GS
- (4) BlackBerry Curve 8520
- (-) Samsung Galaxy S
- (6) BlackBerry Bold 9700
- (3) HTC HD2
- (5) Sony Ericsson X10
- (-) Samsung Wave
- (-) HTC Wildfire
Despite all it’s perceived problems, the iPhone 4 has stormed its way to the top of the charts, and that’s before it’s was launched on all networks. It only went on sale with T-Mobile and Three 2 days ago, so next month I’d expect iPhone 4 to have an even bigger lead over the HTC Desire. This means that the Desire has been knocked off the top spot after 3 months. Following HTC’s announcement that they’re downgrading the screen on the Desire due to supply issues, I’d expect it to drop even further next month. Another handset that’s worth mentioning is the iPhone 3GS, which despite now being an old model held on to third place – I’d imagine the recent price drop and it being offered on all networks will have helped with this considerably.
The scores are achieved using a points system. We award points based on sales, number of customers owning each phone, searches on the website, page views and a few other bits of data. At the end of the month we total these up and publish the rankings.
For the last couple of months I’ve been revealing the scores for the top handsets as I think it gives a better idea of just how incredibly popular these phones are. This month iPhone 4 scored more than the HTC Desire and iPhone 3GS combined, based on our points system.
iPhone 4 scored 318 points (+ 198), the HTC Desire came in second with 206 points (-37), iPhone 3GS held on to 3rd place with 100(no change). By comparison, the BlackBerry 8520 in 4th scored 39 points and the HTC Wildfire in tenth place scored just 20.
BlackBerry handsets have had another strong month and have managed to hold onto the same positions that they’ve held for the last 3 months.
Sony Ericsson aren’t doing too badly, the X10 slipped slightly to 8th place. Their new X10 Mini and X10 Mini Pro didn’t manage to make the top ten, but finished 12th and 25th respectively.
Nokia as I predicted last month, Nokia have now slipped out of the top ten. Their best performing handset is still the X6 which has dropped to 14th place.
Motorola. Still no sign of Motorola. Despite a few recent successes in America, Motorola are still struggling to launch a winner over here. Their best performer this month was the Milestone which could only manage 41st.
LG could only manage 23rd with the Cookie. This is really bad as the Cookie was originally released back in 2007 and they’ve failed to release a handset since then that’s been anywhere near as popular.
Samsung have had a good month with both the Galaxy S and the Wave breaking into the top ten – a massive improvement on last months 27th and 14th places respectively. The Tocco Lite has held on to 11th place. The Galaxy S is a great alternative to both iPhone 4 and the HTC Desire so I’d expect to see this in the top ten for a quite a while.
Coming Up
August and September are fairly quiet months for handset releases, although we are hoping to see some new handsets from BlackBerry, Nokia and Motorola. For more information on what’s coming up in the next few weeks, take a look at our Release Calendar.
About this Top Ten
This list is unique as it is not based on handset sales, but the number of users with a particular phone, accessory sales and visitors to the mobilefun.co.uk website between 1st & 31st July 2010.