Mobile internet industry shifts focus to Asia
The $2 trillion industry of handset manufacturers, telecom carriers and content suppliers are shifting focus to emerging markets like Asia according to a recent survey.
According to a recent survey by ITU, the sales of high-end devices in mature markets in the last few years has slowed down, and now the focus is on emerging markets where demand of budget devices and services are on the rise.
According to the estimates given by the International Telecommunications Union (ITU) emerging markets have grown at 27 times since 2007 which is more than developed countries for the first time. European smartphone market has shown a growth of 12 percent in January-March from last year which is the slowest since 2004.
ITU states that this year Asia Pacific will have more mobile Internet users than Europe and America combined. There are 23 in 100 in mobile Internet users in India versus 67 in Europe and 48 in America.
Asia is expected to emerge as the driving force of global growth in the next two decades, according to a statement by Scott Lee, head of Asia at Appsnack.
With the growth shifting to mid range and budget mobiles the main challenge will be faced by companies like Samsung and Apple which constitute half of the high end smartphone market. Apple’s revenues in China have slumped to 43 per cent in April-June from the last quarter and 14 per cent from 2012. Analysts blame lack of budget and mid-range mobile phones for the slow down. Samsung has also indicated that its quarterly operating profit will also fall short of estimates.
India has become the third largest smartphone market with the emergence of strong domestic manufacturers like Micromax who recently launched the Canvas 4 with similar features to Samsung Galaxy S3 at half the price.
Source: ET