Smartphones Outsold Feature Phones In 2013 Tips Gartner

Gartner has published its numbers for the mobile phone market in 2013. The numbers show that for the first time ever, smartphones outsold feature phones. The Gartner numbers show that global sales of smartphones to end users in 2013 totaled 968 million units. That represents an increase of 42.3% from 2012.

Gartner shows that the sales of smartphones totaled 53.6% of the overall mobile phone sales for the year, exceeding the annual sales numbers for feature phones for the first time. The top smartphone vendor in the world in sales to end users for 2013 was Samsung with 31% of the market.

Samsung's market share grew slightly for 2013 compared to the 30.3% that it held in 2012. The second place vendor in the smartphone market was Apple with 15.6% of the market. Apple declined significantly in market share compared to 2012 when it held 19.1%. The third place smartphone vendor was Huawei with 4.8% of the market, a tie with LG holding the same 4.8% though Huawei held a slight lead in units sold.

Lenovo is the fifth firm in the market with 4.5%. Gartner also shows that smartphone sales grew 36% in Q4 2013 and accounted for 57.6% of all mobile phone sales for the quarter. That volume was an increase of 44% year over year. Android is still the most popular smartphone OS by a large margin with 78.4% of the market in 2013 leaving iOS 15.6% of the market. Microsoft held 3.2% of the market and Blackberry is left with a scant and shrinking 1.9% of the smartphone market. iOS declined significantly compared to the 19.1% of the smartphone market it had in 2012.

SOURCE: Gartner