Smartphones Overtake Feature Phone Sales

The day has finally arrived, the straw that broke the feature phone’s back is now on the “winning side”. I am referring to total sales figures of smartphones as well as feature phones. Needless to say, today marks the first time in the history of mankind that smartphones have overtaken feature phones where sales volume is concerned. In the second quarter of 2013, a total of 435 million handsets were sold worldwide, where 225 million of those happen to be smartphones, which would represent a massive increase of 46.5% year on year. As for the remaining 210 million, those happen to be under the feature phones category that experienced a 21% drop in total sales, when compared with the same period in 2012.

Google’s Android mobile operating system does seem to dominate majority of the world’s smartphone market share, taking a 79% chunk, and Samsung is unsurprisingly the main driver behind this figure after moving a whopping 71 million devices in total throughout Q2 2012. While Apple’s iPhone sales have increased to 31.9 million units, it saw its worldwide share shrink to 14.2% from 18.8% during the previous year’s corresponding quarter. When do you think that the last feature phone will roll out from a factory somewhere in this world? I suppose as long as the most basic smartphone remains more expensive than a basic feature phone, there will always be a market for the latter.

Edwin Kee
Categories: Cellphones
Tags: Smartphones