How many smartphones do you think were shipped across the world in 2013? The answer is a pretty staggering 1 flipping billion. 1.004 billion if you want us to be exact.
This is huge percentage of the overall mobile phone shipments of 1.8 billion last year and a 38.4% jump from the previous year’s figures. It is also the first time that more than a billion smartphone devices were shipped in one calendar year.
In amongst all this smartphone shipping madness all over the planet the company does the most business was once again Samsung.
Low Cost is the Key Factor
The firm which provided the figures is market research company IDC. They revealed that Apple and Huawei are the firms behind Samsung. Ryan Reith is a program director with IDC and he said that “large screen devices and low cost” are a couple of the big factors which led to the increased growth figures in the industry. Of those two factors he thinks that low cost is probably the most crucial one, which sounds reasonable enough.
In fact, in countries such as India and China lower cost phones such as those under £100 or so are expected to soon be the biggest segment of the market.
In terms of cold, hard numbers, Samsung holds 31.3% of the global market while Apple has a 15.3% share and Huwaei is quite far behind with 4.9%. After these three phone manufacturers come LG with 4.8% and then Lenovo with 4.5%. The big difference between Samsung and Apple is largely explained by the fact that Samsung a growth rate of 42.9% in 2013 while Apple’s growth was only 12.9%.
Do you think we will ever fall out of love with smartphones?
