For the first time ever, the global smart phone market seems very impressive due to increased demand of different smartphone around the world. In2013, more than 1 billion smartphone units shipped worldwide and Samsung is the leading vendor in the stocks rolled out as per the report recently published by IDC (International Data Corporation) called the Worldwide Quarterly Mobile Phone Tracker.
However, both of these facts don’t come as a surprise for those following the quarterly reports of the mobile market. We also had a similar report from Strategy Analytics, who narrowly aid that the total shipments was 990 million and just fell short of the landmark 1 billion figure. It is quite interesting in both cases that the demand of smart phones have increased exponentially, driven by cheap devices (less than $150) manufactured in India and China. The high accessibility to cheap smart phone points out that there is little potential for future phones to replace the demands. This further will put pressure on companies like Nokia to change their product portfolio. The challenges for companies like Lenovo, LG, Huawei, who are relatively new to the smart phone market, will more likely be based on the means to achieve growth via razor thin profit margins.
Ryan Reith, the program director for IDC’s Worldwide Quarterly Mobile Phone Tracker notes that the key trends that are driving the demand for smart phones are low cost and large screen devices. More numbers of youngsters are now having smart phones than ever before. The devices come with a range of facilities (internet, gaming, chat, music, camera, etc) other than the basic options for phones and this has been a driving factor in sales. While cheap devices don’t really form the crux of the smart phone market, it is volume of sales that has been the reason for the statistics. The Indian and Chinese manufacturers are coming up with numerous devices that bring a solid computing experience to the end user.
In 2013, global vendors shipped more than 1 billion devices and this has been a 38.4% increase compared to 725.5 million devices shipped in 2012. There is reason enough for smart phone vendors to feel happy. The shipment numbers in 2011 was just 494.4 million units. The figures have more than doubled in a matter of two years and demonstrate new vendor strategies and strong demands from end user. The rise in popularity has been enormous and the industry as a whole can be said to be the fastest growing markets of the world.
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