Friday, 19 October 2012
A new report from the research and consulting firm Strategy Analytics says the numbers are set to double by 2015-end. The figures translate into one out of every seven people globally carries a smartphone. "By the third quarter of 2011, we estimate there were 708 million smartphones in use worldwide. After a further year of soaring demand, the number of smartphones in use worldwide reached 1.038 billion units during the third quarter of 2012,"
The researcher further says Nokia
had launched the world's first smartphone in 1996, and dominated the
market for over a decade. But the dynamics changed by 2007 when iPhone
was launched, and the Android platform saw a rapid growth worldwide. Bloomberg in its report says the growth of the smartphone market, estimated worth $219 billion last year, helped Apple and Samsung increase their earnings as they took over the likes of Espoo and Nokia. Last month, Apple sold more than 5 millon units of the iPhone 5, breaking a record set by its predecessor iPhone 4S.
According to Strategy Analytics, the number of mobiles in usage is expected to go past 10 billion by 2016.
