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Parks Associates, Gartner, The NPD Group: News briefs

Smartphone users to quadruple over next five years
More than 2 billion users worldwide will own at least one smartphone in 2015, per Parks Associates.

According to the company?s recent study, unit sales will grow more than 175 percent from 2010. The company finds that HTC, Samsung and Apple are among the most successful manufacturers, while Nokia and Research In Motion are slow to innovate.

According to Parks Associates, RIM?s smartphone market share has declined from 19.8 percent in 2009 to 16.5 percent in 2010, while Apple?s market share grew from 13.9 percent to 15.8

Mobile device sales total 428M in first quarter of 2011
Mobile communication device sales to end users totaled 427.8 million in the first quarter of 2011 ? a 19 percent increase from the first quarter of 2010, per a recent study conducted by Gartner.

Additionally, the company said that the earthquake and tsunami in Japan will have a smaller effect on the mobile communication devices market than what was initially anticipated.

Gartner predicts that manufacturers? sales into the channel will drop in the second quarter of 2011, while sales through to consumers will be flat.

As mobile music soars, payment is still a problem
Nine million new mobile-music listeners have entered the market in 2010, but payments still remains a problem, according to a recent study by The NPD Group.

The company saw that year-over-year mobile music listening increased from 12 percent of U.S. Web users in 2009 to 17 percent in 2010.

Additionally, according to NPD?s Mobile Music Report, more consumers are now placing their own music collections on their phones than are using Pandora and other mobile radio platforms.

A majority of consumers are taking advantage of free or ad-supported options to get their music, but the probability of them ever paying for it is low.

Eight out of 10 consumers claim that what they get for free is good enough, so they have no need to upgrade from a free version of these programs, per the study.

The study found that very few consumers are willing to pay extra for the ability to access their music when they are out of range of their carrier's service.