Industry first: Smartphones out-ship feature phones

April 27th, 2013, 00:55 Posted By: wraggster

A new report from IDC reveals that more smartphones were shipped in Q1 2013 than features phones.
Vendors shipped a total of 518.6 million mobile phones in Q1, compared to 402.4 million units in Q1 2012 and 483.2 million in Q4.
"Phone users want computers in their pockets. The days where phones are used primarily to make phone calls and send text messages are quickly fading away," said Kevin Restivo, senior research analyst with IDC's Worldwide Quarterly Mobile Phone Tracker. "As a result, the balance of smartphone power has shifted to phone makers that are most dependent on smartphones."
"In addition to smartphones displacing feature phones, the other major trend in the industry is the emergence of Chinese companies among the leading smartphone vendors," noted Ramon Llamas, research manager with IDC's Mobile Phone team. "A year ago, it was common to see previous market leaders Nokia, BlackBerry (then Research In Motion), and HTC among the top five. While those companies have been in various stages of transformation since, Chinese vendors, including Huawei and ZTE as well as Coolpad and Lenovo, have made significant strides to capture new users with their respective Android smartphones."
Samsung continued to lead the worldwide smartphone market and shipped more units than the next four vendors combined (Apple, LG, Huawei and ZTE).

http://www.pcr-online.biz/news/read/...-phones/030826

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