According to
research company Gartner, the move of consumers from feature phones to smartphones
has finally seen smartphones surpass feature phones in sales for the first time
in the second quarter of 2013.
Gartner
claims about 435 million phones were shipped during the second quarter of the
current year and smartphones accounted for 225 million units while feature
phones account for the rest.
This represents
a 51.8% stake for smartphones and 48.2% for the feature phones. The smartphones
has witnessed a rise of 46.5% in sales compared to the second quarter of 2012.
“Smartphones
accounted for 51.8 percent of mobile phone sales in the second quarter of 2013,
resulting in smartphone sales surpassing feature phone sales for the first
time,” Anshul Gupta, principal research analyst at Gartner said.
Asia/Pacific,
Latin America and Eastern Europe experienced the highest smartphone growth rate
of 74.1%, 55.7%, and 31.6% respectively according to the report.
Samsung Electronics
Co. is responsible for 71.3 million
units of the 225 million smartphone sales which accounts for 31.7% share from
29.7% in the second quarter of 2012. Apple also sold 32 million units of
smartphones which accounts for 14.2% of smartphone sales while LG sold 11.5
million units (5.1%).
The Android
OS is king with a market share of 79% up from 64.2% from the second quarter of
2012. iOS comes second with a market share of 14.2% down from 18.8% in the same
period of 2012.
Windows phone
has moved to a 3.3% share leapfrogging blackberry which now stand at 2.7% share
of the market, down from 5.2%. Other OSes like Symbian and Bada account for
less than 1%.
Phone manufacturer
Nokia has been more affected by the decline in the demand for feature phones as
its total phone sales dropped from 83.4 million units in 2012 to 61 million in 2012.
Most of Nokia phone sales are feature phones.
A rival
research company International Data Corporation released its results for the
second quarter. There are not many variations from the values but you can check
it for comparison HERE.
Source: Gartner
Posts
Smartphones have surpassed feature phones in sales for the first time