According to report compiled by market research firm IDC, for the first time this quarter the number of smartphones shipped worldwide has eclipsed that of the number of feature phones sold in the same time period. Out of the 418.6 million phones shipped, around 216 million were smartphones. The phone market overall is doing better than last year, with over 16.2 million more units shipped this year.
Samsung leads other manufacturers in the smartphone market. It shipped around 115 million phones (which include smartphones as well as feature phones) in the first quarter of 2013, compared to a little less than 94 million handsets in the first quarter of 2012. Apple (37.4 million units from 35.1 million) and LG (15.4 million units from 13.7 million) showed mild sequential growth too. The IDC also brought to notice the fact that the last time Apple posted a single digit year-over-year rate of growth was way back in the third quarter of 2009. Other smartphone makers all combined shipped around 175.4 million devices compared to 161.1 million in 2012. These figures give an idea about the growth of the industry but not so much about how well each manufacturer is doing.
Nokia has been the company that has suffered the most due to the shift in consumer choices. The Finnish company’s smartphone segment hasn’t set the market on fire (though it is growing steadily) and its feature phone segment steadily losing customers. Nokia shipped around 21 million fewer phones in the first quarter of 2013 than it did around the same time in 2012, which represents a 25% drop in sale volumes. It remains the world’s second largest phone seller but that position might soon be usurped by third-placed Apple. ZTE lost out on market share this year as the number of devices shipped by the manufacturer dropped from 16.2 million in the first quarter of 2012 to about 13.5 million in the first quarter of 2013.
According to Kevin Restivo, research analyst at IDC, phones are no more used to merely make phone calls and send text messages, due to which smartphones are increasing in popularity while feature phones are fading into oblivion. The IDC report also shows that there is a lot of scope for growth in the smartphone shipments in developing markets like Brazil, China and India. This maybe because of these countries’ large populations and recent economic boom, due to which a more financially secure middle class is willing to spend money on smartphones.
