Economists at the US investment bank Goldman Sachs have revised downward their forecast for the growth in smartphone unit sales for the current year.
The bank lowered its 2011 growth forecast to 52 per cent from 57 per cent, in order that it would better reflect the weakness of Research in Motion (RIM) and Nokia.
However, Goldman Sachs kept its growth estimate for the entire mobile phone handset market unchanged at 10 per cent during 2011.
Goldman Sachs anticipates that the market share of Nokia’s Symbian-based handhelds and RIM’s Blackberry devices will both decline.
According to the Goldman Sachs report, the market share of the American online search engine Google’s Android-based handsets is predicted to grow faster than expected.
