New data from
analytics company, Gartner Inc., has revealed that mobile phones sales in the
third quarter of 2013 increased to a figure of 455.6 million units which is a
5.7% increase from the 431 million units in the same period last year.
Smartphone
sales has continued its steady rise after 250.2 million units of smartphones
were sold in the last quarter to give it a 55% share of the overall mobile
phone sales which is the highest till date. This is a 45.8% increase from the
third quarter of 2012.
“Sales of
feature phones continued to decline and the decrease was more pronounced in
markets where the average selling price (ASP) for feature phones was much
closer to the ASP affordable smartphones,” said Anshul Gupta, principal
research analyst at Gartner.
Samsung
continues to lead the mobile phone sales category after posting sales of 117
million mobile phones in Q3 to give it a 25.7% share of the mobile phone
market, an increase from 98 million and 22.7% in Q3 2012.
Struggling mobile
phone maker, Nokia, is still the second in mobile phone sales with a figure of
63 million units which is majorly due to its feature phone sales. This represents
a decrease for the phone maker which was recently acquired by Microsoft. Nokia posted a figure of 82.3 million in the
same period last year.
Samsung
continues to dominate the smartphone market after selling 80.3 million units in
the last quarter to have a 32.1% market share which is the same percentage with
its 55 million sales figure in the same period last year.
Apple came in
second with sales of 30.3 million units to have a 12.1% share of the smartphone
market. This is an increase in sales from 24.6 million units in Q3 2012 but a
decrease in market share from 14.3%.
The surprise
package is Lenovo which has overtaken South Korean smartphone maker LG into the
third spot after selling 12.8 million units in Q3 which gave it a 5.1% of the
smartphone market and left LG at fourth. This is mainly due to the boom in the
Chinese smartphone market which accounts for about 95% of Lenovo’s smartphone
sales.
Google’s
operating system for smartphones, Android, has extended its lead further over
its rivals after it featured on 205 million of 250.2 million smartphones sold
to give it an 81.9% share of the smartphone market. This is a massive
improvement from its 124.5 million sales figure and 72.6% share from Q3 2012.
Apple’s iOS
came in second with 30.3 million units and 12.1% of the market share. Of course,
the effects of Apple’s new smartphones, iPhone 5S and 5C cannot be fully known
until the results of this quarter are revealed.
“While the
arrival of the new iPhones 5S and 5C had a positive impact on overall sales,
such impact could have been greater had they not started shipping late in the
quarter. While we saw some inventory built up for the iPhone 5C, there was good
demand for iPhone 5S with stock out in many markets,” said Gupta.
Gartner
however revealed that Microsoft’s Windows OS was the biggest winner of the
quarter with a 123% increase from Q3 2012. Windows OS was on 8.9 million
smartphones sold in the last quarter to give it a 3.6% share of the market, up
from 4 million and 2.3% in Q3 2012.
“However, the
winner of this quarter is Microsoft which grew 123%. Microsoft announced the
intent to acquire Nokia’s devices and services business, which we believe will
unify effort and help drive appeal of Windows ecosystem,” Gupta said.
It is
expected that mobile phone sales in 2013 will reach 1.81 billion units, a 3.4%
increase from 2012.
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Android increases market share as Lenovo displaces LG