Global high-end smartphone sales have steadily stabilized

Summary: Tencent Science and Technology News (Si Rui) Beijing time July 24, according to the Reuters Web site published in Tuesday, signed by Jeremy Wigstaff (Jeremy Wagstaff), after five years of explosive growth, the global high-end smartphone sales have been gradually

Tencent Science and Technology News (Si Rui) Beijing time July 24, according to the Reuters Web site published in Tuesday, signed by Jeremy Wigstaff (Jeremy Wagstaff), after five years of explosive growth, the global high-end smartphone sales have steadily stabilized. As sales growth moves towards Asia-represented emerging markets, the world's high-end smartphone market, with a revenue of $2 trillion trillion, is poised to face sales swings in market challenges.

In a mature market economy, mobile operators offer mobile-phone subsidies that have boosted high-end smartphone sales. The high-end smartphone market is already saturated in developed markets, and emerging markets will be the new high-growth market for smartphones. Emerging-market consumers favor lower-priced smartphone products and related services.

This year, the number of mobile internet users worldwide will surpass the number of mobile internet users in developed countries for the first time. The number of mobile Internet users in the developed world has increased four times-fold since 2007, according to Analysys Telecommunications Union, a market research institute. The number of mobile internet users in developing countries increased by 27 times times over the same period.

"The focus of the global mobile ecosystem is shifting from the US and Western European markets to the Asian market," said Mary Ellen Gordon, research director of the Mobile Market Analysis Agency, Flurry Inc. "However, this shift has put pressure on Apple and Samsung to raise their profit margins," he said. Smartphone sales in these two companies account for half of global sales.

Samsung has hinted that its second-quarter operating margins will be lower than expected as demand for high-end smartphones slows. Apple is also developing low-cost, multiple-color iphones to fully meet the needs of the mass market, according to sources.

Although this is not a crisis for the two companies. But many users in the mature market already have a smartphone, according to market professionals. A year-on-year increase of 12% per cent in European smartphone shipments from January to March this year was the smallest increase since IDC tracked the data in 2004, according to a report published by IDC, an IT market research firm.

Asia: Key Drivers

Many new mobile internet users will come from the Asia-Pacific market. The ITU expects mobile internet users in the Asia-Pacific market to surpass the total number of mobile internet users in Europe and America this year, and the latter both have little room to grow. The proportion of mobile internet users in Asia is currently less than 23%, while Europe and the Americas are up to 67% and 48% respectively.

"In the next two years, Asia will be the main driver of growth for mobile internet users around the world," said Scott Lee, president of Appsnack, interactive of the US digital advertising company exponential.

The only worry is that most of this growth comes from low-end smartphone users, and the price of mobile phones is often only one-tenth of the price of smart phones in developed countries. Frederick Wong, the portfolio manager at Efusion Investment LTD, the investment agency that focuses on technology markets, said the ease of the latest Android operating system for Low-cost components, Google (Weibo), The optimization of product design by chip makers and falling chip prices will be the driving force behind the growth in the number of mobile internet users in Asia.

As the world's largest mobile internet market, mobile phones in China have reached 1 billion, but only about 20% of the 3G users. As a result, China has become a battleground for global smartphone makers. There are almost a few local service providers in every highly segmented demand market in China. The millet phone, for example, looks much like an iphone, but it sells less than half the iphone 5.

That makes many big handset makers feel overwhelmed.

"Our goal is to take the lead in the market, so being confined to a certain range of product prices will not help us achieve our goals," said Wong Wai, chief financial officer of Lenovo Group, in an interview with Reuters recently Wong. ”

As the world's second-largest mobile internet user market, India is facing a more serious situation. Sameer Singh, an investment agency Bitchemy Ventures in Hyderabad, India, said that the price of low-end Android handsets in the Indian market had fallen to about $50 trillion in the past year, down 50% per cent. Mr Singh also predicted that the price of low-end smartphones in the Indian market would fall by another 20% next year, affected by lower prices for Nokia and Samsung's functional handsets.

As prices continue to fall, more and more users will choose to buy smart devices. Market Research institute emarketer predicts that between now and 2017, the number of new smartphone contract subscribers in China and India will be more than 28% per cent worldwide. India's share of global smartphone subscribers will even quadruple.

Traditional manufacturers affected

This has brought huge challenges to traditional smartphone makers. Samsung's share of the low-end and high-end smartphone market, for example, has fallen. Some low-end smartphone makers have slashed prices for some models in quarterly units, while others have challenged the high-end smartphone market with almost the same technical parameters and relatively low prices for smartphones.

Micromax, the Indian handset maker, launched the canvas 4 smartphone this month. The phone's function can be comparable to Samsung Galaxy 3 and note 2, but the maximum price is only half the latter. "Big global smartphone makers like Samsung have difficulty competing against their local rivals in the Indian market," Samir Singh. ”

Not only are mobile prices falling, but the price of tablets is actually falling at a faster rate. Mr Singh calls smartphone users and tablet users "a whole new generation of internet users". Demand for tablet computers in the Philippines has increased three times-fold over the past year, according to statistics published by GFK, the E-commerce Market Research Institute, and the price of tablet computers across South Asia has fallen by 25% over the same period.

Viber, chief executive of the free network call and information application provider, Tarmont Marco, said: "The transition from functional handsets to basic smartphone basics is like ' replacing a good bike with the old car of the 70." The car is old, but you can drive it in a few days from New York to Chicago, but you will never be able to ride a bike within a few days. ”

Regardless of the quality of the hardware or the quality of the network access, the smartphone or tablet has access to the same user interface, applications and the online software market, which is an important reason for the increased use of mobile internet, Marco said.

"Once users choose to use smartphones, the use of mobile Internet appears to have soared," Marco said. Smart-phone users are significantly more active in using mobile internet than functional mobile users. Viber predicts that Vietnam, Pakistan, Burma and many African countries will become the fastest-growing and most-used area of mobile internet.

Popular apps and online programs

Even more surprising is the fact that the use of mobile Internet in Asia is still surging despite the imperfect Internet services. Bitchemy's Singh points out that India's 3G network coverage is low and most of it covers only big cities.

When serial entrepreneur (serial entrepreneur) Mohan (S. Mohan in Singapore to create the Indian Bollywood streaming media site Spuul, he expects Indian users will lag behind developed country users for about five years in the use of the service. "I was surprised by the actual usage of the Spuul Web site for Indian users," Mohan said. I was told that because of the lack of enough WiFi and 3G networks, it would be a little later for Indian users to know the Spuul site. But I now find that if you have a smart device, the user's need for content is compelling. ”

In the Chinese market, demand for mobile internet users is surging for content, including Tencent Micro-letters that have more than 300 million users, the "good voice of China" like "American Idol" and games such as online mahjong.

Bottleneck effect still exists

However, the bottleneck effect is still there.

Low network coverage and high spending on 3G mobile and SMS services are still daunting for many consumers. Smartphone sales accounted for up to 62% of total handset sales in last year's China Mobile phone market, with smartphone users using only 16% of mobile internet access, according to statistics published by Market Research institute Euromonitor.

The three mobile operators of China Mobile (micro-blog), Chinese Unicom (Weibo) and telecom (micro-blogging) are spending billions of of billions of dollars a year on mobile subsidy programs, hoping to lure smartphone users to use their mobile networks.

In other Asian markets, Philippine mobile operators are trying to introduce subsidies for low-end smartphones, while Indian handset makers are trying to boost their smartphone market share. Apple has also started offering installment payments to buy iphones, while Micromax has packaged free data services for months while selling handsets.

"As industry grows more saturated, mobile phones and tablet makers will have to face the problem of how to deal with falling margins and falling prices," said Joe Nguyen, an analyst at the Global Internet Market Research Institute, Chow Ran, in Singapore. Eventually, mobile phones and tablets are likely to repeat the same old PC. ”