It’s no secret that smartphone and tablet sales are going through the roof and although the market could be overheating, it is still not showing any signs of weakness. 

According to IDC’s latest report, shipments of smart connected devices in the fourth quarter of 2012 were up 28.3 percent from the prior year. Overall sales continued to surge, with an estimated 1.2 billion devices shipped last year. Tablets saw the largest year-on-year growth, up 78.4 percent over 2011. Smartphone sales grew 46.1 percent.

Most vendors saw their shipments grow in Q4 2012. Samsung let the way with 86 percent year-on-year growth and with 77.9 million units shipped in Q4. It managed to surpass its arch nemesis Apple, which shipped 74.8 million units but saw its shipments grow 29.7 percent from 2011.

Lenovo managed to squeeze into third spot, thanks to traditionally strong sales of portable PCs, but the outfit also saw its China centric mobile strategy start to pay off. Lenovo shipped 23.7 million smartphones in 2012, up from just 3.7 million in 2011.
HP ranked fourth, with 15.1 million units shipped in 2012. However, HP’s sales of smartphones and tablets were down 8.5 percent, which comes as no surprise. Dell ranked fifth, but saw its sales drop by 12.9 percent. By the fourth quarter, it dropped out of the top five vendors, replaced by Sony.