2012: The World Will Go Smarter With Smart Phones

By siliconindia   |   Tuesday, 27 December 2011, 00:26 IST
Printer Print Email Email
sryh

Bangalore: With the new year bringing in economic recession and slow economic growth to Europe and the U.S. (and hence the whole world over), one would expect a lag in purchase of new gadgets, especially high-end phones.

However, as per research conducted by Kantar Worldpanel ComTech, British Smartphone markets have grown from 21.4 percent last year to 30.9 percent in the past 12 weeks. Research by Reuters too showed that iPhone sales have seen a rapid increase, going from holding a share of 25 percent a year ago to 36 percent in the past 12 weeks in the U.S.  and have been growing incredibly in Australia as well.


This trend, though doesn’t strike a universal chord especially in countries such as Germany and France. Germany, for instance, saw Android phones taking up 61 percent of the Smartphone market in the same past 12 weeks.

Email Marketing Reports emphasized this fact in an info graphic released in November, based on Gartner’s estimate of the worldwide Smartphone market in its third quarter.  The pie-chart showed that around 53 percent of global Smartphone sales were attributed to the android OS, while Symbian OS phones continued with their decline with 17 percent, but even its share of the market is bigger than that of the iOS (at 15 percent) and RIM (with 11 percent).

The small market share held by Apple could be attributed to the fact that Android comes in various shapes and forms-- one can get phones that are touch-based, have a normal keypad, or suited to the individual in other ways, which run on the Android OS. Apple’s iPhone, however, uses materials such as glass instead of plastic, and aluminum for the phone’ s body, which makes it a more expensive buy.

In any case, Smartphones are here to stay, deems a report by Morgan Stanley and they could very well replace laptops and PCs in the future.