14 DAY TRIAL // The mobile phone market has been affected by the economic turmoil during the last year, this is something that most of you already know, and the same should apply to the fact that, even though the economic conditions were unfavorable, smartphone shipments registered growth. According to IMS Research, while the entire mobile phone market shrank by around 7.9 percent during the last year, the smartphone segment registered a growth of around 15 percent year-on-year during 2009.
The research firm also notes that the increase in smartphone shipments was one of the few growing trends when it comes to the global handset market. 2009 was a difficult year for the mobile industry, an IMS Research study shows, and the overall performance of the market is in contrast with the growth registered by smartphones. However, it seems that this state of fact is proof that consumer preferences are changing.
IMS Research analyst, Chris Schreck, commented on the findings: “Last year validated the idea that the target market for smartphones is expanding rapidly. Increasingly, consumers who purchase a new handset are choosing a smartphone. The notion that smartphones are exclusively luxury purchases or enterprise tools is rapidly giving way to a perception of smartphones as a device with mass market appeal.”
Smartphones have seen impressive growth mainly in markets like North America and Western Europe, the research firm notes. The expectations for 2009 were low, yet these devices managed to prove them wrong in the end. According to IMS Research, the increase in shipments of these handsets was driven by the focus from OEMs to expand their smartphone portfolio with appealing new items, something that resulted in great innovation in the smartphone space during 2009.
“Between Android's increased market presence, faster processor speeds, more advanced displays, and increasingly sophisticated user interfaces, the gap between many of 2009's devices and those released in the previous year was noticeably vast. There were a number of devices in 2009 that proved difficult for consumers to pass up. And for their part, mobile network operators helped fuel smartphone growth with competitive subsidies and aggressively priced data plans,” Schreck concluded.
As for the future, the shipments of smartphones are expected to see an accelerated growth, MS Research notes. According to the research firm, the CAGR of the segment should be of 24.5 percent between 2010 and 2015. However, this growth is also expected to influence negatively the feature phone segment, based on the fact that the average selling price for entry-level smartphones is getting in line with the costs of high-end feature phones.