Gartner: Global smartphone market growth to slow this year

Gartner, a market-research agency, said Thursday that global smartphone revenue growth is expected to slow in 2014 as many cheap smartphone landing markets pull down average selling prices this year. Demand for smartphones in mature markets such as North America and Europe is showing signs of abating. The world's leading smartphone makers, such as Samsung and Apple, are starting to launch relatively inexpensive phone models into emerging markets, such as Apple's iphone 5 c. Anshul Gupta, Gartner analyst, Anchours Gupta that sales of high-end smartphones will shrink as low-end and midrange smartphones grow in emerging markets, which will tilt the overall pattern to the lower end. As a result, it is also a matter of course to have lower average selling prices and slower revenue growth. Global smartphone sales overtook ordinary handsets for the first time last year, accounting for 53.6% and 57.6% of total handset sales in 2013 and the fourth quarter of the year. The overall sales of smartphones in 2014 will be expected to grow from 968 million units last year to 121.3 billion, Gupta said. Of all smartphones, nearly 1 billion will carry Google's (Weibo) Android operating system. Smartphones using the system reached 760 million units in 2013, accounting for about 78.4% of total sales. Last year, Apple accounted for 15.6 of total sales, with a slight drop in market share over the previous 19.1%. Samsung and Apple shares fell in the fourth quarter of last year. Meanwhile, sales of Huawei, China's smartphone maker, have risen. Huawei has expanded its smartphone sales by 85% per cent through overseas expansion. The data contrast is enough to show that demand for high-end smartphones is weakening. In the fourth quarter of last year, Samsung's market share fell to 29.5% from 31.1% a year earlier, according to Gartner. Apple's market share fell from 20.9% a year earlier to 17.8%. Huawei's market share grew to 5.7% from 4.2% a year earlier. Industry analysts say the current situation has a bigger negative impact on Samsung than Apple. Because Apple has never been in the smartphone field by quantity, nor has it ever been considered. Mr. Lee Simpson, an investment firm Jefferies Group analyst Li Hu Simpson, said Samsung had to plan how to mobilize resources and make adjustments again, and they had to innovate in the next year or two. Simpson also believes that handset makers must change their strategy to accommodate the new phase of smartphone development. According to Gartner, global handset sales reached 1.8 billion last year, with nearly one-fourth per cent of the market share being occupied by Samsung, compared with 13.9% of Nokia, the former handset giant.