Worldwide mobile phone sales have shoot up by 5.7 percent in the third quarter of this year with smartphone sales been maximum accounting 55 percent of the total mobile phone sales.
Smartphone sales across the world have increased by 45.8% from the third quarter of 2012 according Gartner. Asia Pacific region exhibited 77.3 percent in the smartphone sales while mobile phone sales grew by 11.9 percent.
“Sales of feature phones continued to decline and the decrease was more pronounced in markets where the average selling price (ASP) for feature phones was much closer to the ASP affordable smartphones,” said Anshul Gupta, principal research analyst at Gartner.
“In markets such as China and Latin America, demand for feature phones fell significantly as users rushed to replace their old models with smartphones.”
According to Gartner analysts, global mobile phone sales might reach 1.81 billion units by the end of this year, a 3.4 percent increase from previous year.
“We will see several new tablets enter the market for the holiday season, and we expect consumers in mature markets will favor the purchase of smaller-sized tablets over the replacement of their older smartphones” Gupta said.
Big Players in the Mobile Phone Market
Despite Apple’s lawsuit against Samsung, the South Korea- based company increased its lead in the global market over the US-based Apple. Even Samsung’s share was flat in the third quarter of this year but the launch of Samsung Note 3 helped the company to have a strong foothold in the global smartphone market.
However Samsung Electronics confirmed that it owes Apple $52 million dollar, against Apple’s demand of $380 million for copying vital features of the iPhone and iPad.
Apple’s smartphone sales increased by 23.2 percent year-on-year, reaching 30.3 million units in the third quarter of this year.
“While the arrival of the new iPhones 5s and 5c had a positive impact on overall sales, such impact could have been greater had they not started shipping late in the quarter. While we saw some inventory built up for the iPhone 5c, there was good demand for iPhone 5s with stock out in many markets,” said Mr. Gupta.
Lenovo on the other hand got an edge with increase in sales of its smartphones to 12.9 million units, up by 84.5 percent year-on-year, raising its share in the Chinese smartphone market.
Even Nokia’s performance was more than expected in this quarter with increase in sales of Lumia and Asha series. Nokia had 63 million mobile phones sales in the third quarter. According to Gartner, Lumia’s popularity helped the company reach number 8 in global smartphone market.
Following table shows Worldwide Smartphone Sales to End Users by Vendor in 3Q13 (Thousands of Units)
| Company | 3Q13 Units | 3Q13 Market Share (%) | 3Q12 Units | 3Q12 Market Share (%) |
| Samsung | 80,356.8 | 32.1 | 55,054.2 | 32.1 |
| Apple | 30,330.0 | 12.1 | 24,620.3 | 14.3 |
| Lenovo | 12,882.0 | 5.1 | 6,981.0 | 4.1 |
| LG Electronics | 12,055.4 | 4.8 | 6,986.1 | 4.1 |
| Huawei | 11665.7 | 4.7 | 7,804.3 | 4.5 |
| Others | 102941.8 | 41.1 | 70206.8 | 40.9 |
| Total | 250,231.7 | 100.0 | 171,652.7 | 100.0 |
Source: Gartner (November 2013)