In an inevitable and predictive occurrence, smartphone shipments have outpaced “non smart” or feature phones for the first time ever. During the first three months of 2013, smartphones accounted for more than half of all mobile handset shipments worldwide. These numbers encompass all vendors, whether they specialize in smartphone or feature phone manufacturing. Behind record profits and sales for the past few quarters, Samsung was the far and away sales leader of all mobile phone manufacturers.
However, LG, Huawei, and ZTE all saw big gains as well, with LG Electronics making a return to the IDC top five smartphone shipments list in Q1. The company posted record high shipments behind extremely strong and increasing interest in their LTE enabled devices like the Optimus G 4G smartphone. As far as the numbers break down, the first quarter of 2013 saw manufacturers ship a total of 216.2 million smartphones globally. That volume gave smartphones a 51.6% market share of total global mobile handset shipments.
IDC is the market research and analysis firm which released the data, and they showed that the smartphone market grew an incredible 41.6% year over year compared to the same quarter in 2012. Having said that, shipments were actually down 5.1% from the last quarter of 2012, which generally posts the most sales due to the ever important holiday shopping season at the end of the year. Total mobile phone units shipped was 418.6 million, including smartphones and less powerful feature phones, and IDC analyst Kevin Restivo said in a statement that phone users want computers in their pockets and purses. He also stated, “The days where phones are used primarily to make phone calls and send text messages are quickly fading away.”
Riding the popularity of their Galaxy Note II and Galaxy S III smartphones, Samsung continued to prove its dominance during the first quarter of this year. The company shipped a record 70.7 million smartphones for a growth of 60.7% over the same time period last year. Apple was way behind in second place with 37.4 million iPhones shipped, which was actually 6.6% better than quarter one in 2012 for the Cupertino based company. While the percent increase for Samsung is certainly impressive, LG posted the biggest percentage gain, more than doubling their smartphone shipments. LG shipped 10.3 million smartphones in the first quarter of this year, up a full 110% over their 2012 effort. Huawei shipped 9.9 million units (up 94%), and ZTE shipped 9.1 million (up 49%).
