Gartner has released its Q2 2013 mobile phones sales report, which shows that smartphones have outsold featurephones for the first time.
Worldwide smartphones sales grew up to 225 million units, a 46.5% increase from the same period last year. This has mostly come at the expense of feature phone sales, which declined by 21% for the same period to 210 million units. Gartner says that despite the all-around increase of smartphone sales, some regions stood up. Those are Asia Pacific, Latin America and Eastern Europe, where sales of smartphones soared by 74.1%, 55.7% and 31.6%, respectively, on an annual basis.
Most responsible for the triumph of smartphones over feature phones is the Android operating system. Google's OS holds 79% of the smartphoen market share for Q2 2013, according to Gartner.
Over 177 million units running Android have been sold worldwide, which is an 80 million YoY increase. Apple's iOS is second with 14.2% market share, down 4.6 percent points despite experiencing a slight increase in net sales. Almost 32 million running Apple's mobile operating system were sold, compared to 28.9 million devices in Q2 last year.
The third spot goes to Microsoft, which achieved a small victory of its own surpassing BlackBerry sales - 7.4 million against 6.1 million, respectively. Microsoft holds 3.3% of the smartphone market, 0.7 percent points more than what it had last year (2.6%).
Lastly, the Symbian OS, which was officially killed by Nokia, is still holding out at 0.3% market share with 0.63 million devices shipped worldwide. Just a year ago, the OS sold a bit over 9 million unit, and held a larger market share than Microsoft and BlackBerry.
As far as manufacturers are concerned, Samsung and LG are riding the Android wave with 31.7% and 5.1% market share taking the first and third spot, respectively. Apple is in the middle with 14.2% market share, while the Chinese Lenovo and ZTe are fourth and fifth.
While the decline of dumb phone sales is great news for Google, Apple and Microsoft transferring users into their respective mobile operating systems, Nokia isn't taking this news very well. As Windows Phone sales aren't doing as great as Nokia has hoped, the Finns still heavily rely on their feature phones to turn up profit for them and keep their head above the water. It's not all bad news for the Finnish company, though, as Gartner points out that Lumia smartphones sales grew nearly 113% in Q2 2013 due to the widening of the lineup.
For the first time in its history Lenovo sold more mobile devices, such as phones and tablets, than its bread and butter until recently PCs. The company made $174 million on revenue of $8.8 billion.
Selling less PCs than mobile phones and tablets doesn't mean that the computer business is slacking at Lenovo, as the Chinese just became the world's biggest PC maker with 12.6 million pieces shipped last quarter. We can blame the Chinese market for Lenovo's success, as 42% of its sales went there, and the record number of smartphones and tablets it managed to dole out was due to the burgeoning demand of the ever-growing Chinese middle class for mobile devices.
In the same report this week that showed how smartphone sales overtook feature phones for the first time, Gartner also lists Lenovo as the fourth smartphone maker worldwide, with 4.7% market share, right after LG.
Posted: 2013-08-15 11:27
