Asian Handset Industry to Rule the Roost in 5 Years; India Posts 186% Sales Growth in Q1 2014
According to the data from Ericsson, mobile penetration for the U.S. and Europe markets are almost over with regard to high-end devices.
Ericsson's chart portrayed the number of smartphone subscriptions estimated in various markets like North America, Latin America, Asia Pacific, Central Europe, Middle East, Africa and Western Europe between 2013 and 2019.
With the date from the cart, emerging markets are set to rule the roost in the cited period. The market penetration forecast clearly showed Asia Pacific is the market to look out for followed by Central Europe, Middle East, Africa, Latin America and Western Europe. North America is the most penetrated high-end smartphone market in the given period.
A huge population of Indian mobile phone users are switching from "feature phones" to smartphones (low-end to high-end) in the recent years. The handset sales growth in India alone is expected to reach 80.57 million units toward the end of 2014, according to a source.
Within Asia Pacific, India witnessed the highest growth rate over 186 percent in the smartphone sales category. This percentage was achieved within January and March 2014 time frame. Also, device vendors in India shipped 17.59 million smartphone units in Q1 2014 as compared to 6.14 million units of Q1 2013.
The smartphone sales trajectory in India is expected to grow by leaps and bounds. This can be attributed to the availability of low-end and cheap devices. Also, Indian vendors employ excellent sales and marketing tactics to woo customers from every corner of the country. This includes the sparsely populated areas.
Kiran Kumar, research manager at IDC India, said the rapid pace of growth in smartphones is expected to continue in India. He added the growth can be attributed to the abundance of low-cost devices using Android and Windows-operating system.
India trumped China in the smartphone sales in the mentioned period. China, meanwhile, posted a year-on-year growth of 31 percent in the first quarter of 2014.