Smartphone sales, however, have grown in Q1 2013 with sales totalling 210 million units. Samsung leads the market 13 percent growth in the first quarter of 2013.
According to research firm Gartner, global mobile sales in the first quarter of 2013 have seen a marginal 0.7 percent increase, rising to 425.8 million. Gartner says the growth was mainly driven by the rise in demand of phones in Asia Pacific markets with a 6.4 percent increase year-on-year.
However, smartphone sales have continued to see the massive growth with sales totalling 210 million units in the first quarter of 2013, up 42.9 percent from the first quarter of 2012.
“More than 226 million mobile phones were sold to end users in Asia/Pacific in the first quarter of 2013, which helped the region increase its share of global mobile phones to 53.1 percent year-on-year,” said Anshul Gupta, principal research analyst at Gartner.
“In addition, China saw its mobile phone sales increase 7.5 percent in the first quarter of 2013, and its sales represented 25.7 percent of global mobile phone sales, up nearly 2 percentage points year-on-year.
“The Chinese and local manufacturers have been exemplary at addressing the demands of buyers by offering affordable devices with optimum features such as 2.5G (EDGE) instead of 3G in a smartphone. In the smartphone market, local and Chinese manufacturers are making faster inroads as they account for 29 percent share in the first quarter of 2013, up from 13.2 percent a year ago.”
Samsung leads the market
From mobile phone vendor perspective, Samsung leads the pack as it registers 13 percent growth in the first quarter of 2013. Its share of smartphones reached 30.8 percent, up 3.2 percentage points from the first quarter of 2012.
“We expect the new Galaxy S4 to be very popular despite being more of an evolution than a truly revolutionary device compared to the S3,” adds Mr. Gupta.
Apple’s sales to end users hit 38.3 million units in the first quarter of 2013, as the company was able to ‘burn some of the inventory’ built at the end of 2012 as iPhone was rolling out to more markets, and as the company geared up for Chinese New Year.
“Apple is faced with the challenge of being increasingly dependent on the replacement market as its addressable market is capped. The next two quarters will also be challenging, as there are no new products are expected to be coming before the third quarter of 2013,” said Mr. Gupta.
LG surpassed ZTE in the first quarter of 2013, grabbing the no. 4 position. ZTE saw a weak performance, failing to grow its smartphone sales, selling 7.9 million smartphones in the first quarter of 2013, a 5.1 percent decline from the fourth quarter of 2012.
Nokia shares drop
Nokia continued to see the share dropping. In the first quarter of this year, the company dropped 4.9 percent, mainly because of the decline in demand for feature phones. However, Nokia’s new smartphone venture, Windows Phone devices, have seen sales growing to 5.1 million units.
Gartner points out that Nokia is yet to hit the peak in the smartphone segment. Nokia’s position in the smartphone market slumped to no.10 in the first quarter of 2013, from No. 8 in the fourth quarter of 2012.
Source: Gartner