Just a few weeks before, we were discussed the year-over-year growth rate of smartphone shipments. Astoundingly, the smartphone recorded 42.2% Y/Y growth in Q2 of this year and clearly, Android dominated with 68.1% market share till the end of Q2 2012, followed by iOS with just 16.9%.
According to a recent report from IHS iSuppli, smartphone will account for 54% of the global mobile handsets shipments in 2013. In the Asia-Pacific regions, users are more likely to own low-end smartphone, while the demands of midrange and high-end smartphones are quite high in the United State and Europe. It’s also expected that smartphone will account for 67% of total mobile handset shipments by 2016.
The research firm has also predicted that feature phone will account just 41% to total mobile handset shipment this year, down from 46% of the last year. In addition to this, it’s also estimated that the demand of feature phone will be squeezed and it will just account for 28% of total mobile handset shipments by 2016.
Indeed, a fierce competition has been sparked out by Apple and Samsung in the market. It’s well-known that Samsung defeated Apple in terms of smartphone shipments and became the world leading smartphone vendor in Q1 of this year. At present, Nokia and RIM are struggling to regain its market share.
As per “Credit Suisse” report, the sales of smartphone would surpass one billion units by 2014 due to beefing up demand of smartphone in China and the firm also projected that the smartphone shipments would surpass 1.05 billion figures by 2014.
Anyway, the report presented by HIS iSuppli is quite lucrative for vendors in order to frame their strategies market-wise. It’s clear that the number of price-sensitive users in Asia-Pacific region is quite higher than other part of the world and vendors would definitely try to roll out the low-end smartphones in these markets. However, I have already discussed that users in the matured markets such as in the U.S. and Europe are unwilling to own feature phones.
