Smartphones accounted for 55 percent of mobile market in Q3
The massive growth of the mobile industry is largely due to the increasing demand for smartphones, according to the latest data from communications technology company, Ericsson. As part of its mobility report, the company revealed the mobile phones sales data for the third quarter of 2013, stating that smartphones accounted for 55 percent of the worldwide handset sales.
Even so smartphones have a long way to go before becoming the dominant mobile device. The report points out that the smartphone segment still represents only 25 percent to 30 percent of the total mobile phone subscriptions in the world. While speculating about the future, the report says by 2019, 5.6 billion of the 9.3 billion mobile subscriptions worldwide will be for smartphones. The estimation basically amounts to smartphones accounting for a massive 60 percent of the overall subscription pie in the next 6 years.
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smartphones will account for 60 percent of global mobile subscriptions by 2019
According to the company, the rise of the smartphone can be attributed to the arrival of lower-priced models in emerging markets like China. Closer home, Indian players like Micromax, Lava and Karbonn have also had an important role to play in this equation, with their value-for-money smartphones.
Ericsson, while tabulating the gathered data, estimates that the mobile traffic coming from mobile handsets will increase tenfold between 2013 and 2019. Video content, which is growing by 55 percent annually, will make up for 50 percent of all mobile global traffic in six years, while social networking and web services will account for around 10 percent by the same period. Overall, the total smartphone traffic will hit 10 Exabytes annually. It is worthwhile to note that one Exabyte amounts to one billion Gigabytes or GB as we normally call it.
One of the biggest markets where the smartphone boom has been recorded is in India, which is currently the third largest smartphone market in the world, after China and the US. While global players like Samsung have a strong presence in this market, local players are also not far behind. Micromax recently rose to become the second largest manufacturer in the country, with much of the growth attributed to its phablet range, the Canvas series. The company will soon be moving away from China gradually and will be assembling phones in India from next year.
