International Data Corporation(IDC), the market research firm that usually outs numbers for the mobile phone market every quarter has something new to say this quarter. According to them, the first quarter of 2013 has been the first time ever in the history of the mobile phone market that the Smartphones have outshipped feature phones. The whole worldwide mobile phone market seems to have grown 4% this quarter. Samsung still remains the leader in the mobile phone market dominating sales in both smartphones as well as feature phones.
Looking closely at the smartphone market chart, LG has more than doubled its marketshare with surging sales of Nexus 4 and other LTE equipped mid range L series of devices. Huawei and ZTE too have seen immense growth, with local market driving their sales. Nokia has slipped out of the top five, and so has the situation been for the past year. Apple is far behind Samsung with 17.3% marketshare, while Samsung is enjoying a big lead at 32.7%.
Total mobile phone shipments though are different. Samsung leads again with 115.0 million units, which means that they have shipped 44.3 million feature phones whereas Nokia, at 61.9 million units has sold 56.8 million feature phones, as the smartphone shipments have been 6.1 million. Apple is in third place, and LG has steadily maintained its fourth place from the last year with ZTE tailing along in the top 5.
The striking thing though, is that Feature phones, which usually dominate the mobile phone market have given way to Smartphones, which have contributed more than half of the total mobile phone sales worldwide. To more prosperous mobile years then!
Source Business Wire