Gartner 2013 analysis: smartphones kick featurephones off the throne

2013 can be termed as the ‘year of the smartphone’ as ‘official’ sales of smartphones nearly touched a billion units and most importantly, smartphones outsold feature phone. 53.6% of all mobile phones sold in the year 2013 were smartphones and 78.6% of smartphones ran Android operating system, Samsung grabbed a third of smartphones sales (and a quarter of mobile phone sales). Apple on the other hand grabbed 17.8% of smarphones sales and slowly approaching Nokia’s marketshare in overall mobile phone marketshare (at 8.3% versus Nokia’s 13.9%). Smartphone sales grew by 36% in 2013 and for the first time ever, domniated feature phone sales. Smartphones marketshare went up from 44% in 2012 to 53.6% in 2013 and we might see a 2:1 ratio of sales in 2014. Samsung grabbed 31% of marketshare in 2013, slightly up from 30.3% in 2012. Bad news for Sammy is that their marketshare fell in Q4 2013 (31.1% in Q42012 to 29.5% in Q42013) and this is mainly due to stagnant design and lack of differentiation between models. Apple’s iPhone 5S and aggresive marketing from Chinese brands made a dent in Samsung’s armor and if the upcoming Galaxy S5 is not radical/revolutionary, we may see beginning of slope. Sony is one particular brand that released many models and yet, dropped to 9th place and is staring at dropping out of top 10 list. Such is the penetration of new players, collective marketshare of top 3 players (Apple, Nokia and Samsung) fell YoY and we are seeing brands like ZTE, Huawei, Lenovo, TCL competing with LG and Sony. Though Apple is seeing strong sales of iPhone 5S across the globe and 4S in developing countries, Android managed to up its marketshare by whopping 12% and ended the year with 78.6% of marketshare with iOS trailing way behind with 15.6% marketshare. Microsoft and Blackberry switched places. In the year 2012, BB OS phones were outselling Windows Phones 2:1 and in the year 2013, MS almost had a 2:1 advantage over Blackberry (WP at 3.2% of share and BB at 1.9%). At this rate, we may not see a place for Blackberry on the table a quarter from now, making this a three horse race. For more detail on this, head to this page. Source