APEJ's Smartphone Shipments to Hit 137 M. Units in 2011: IDC
2011/03/17 | By Quincy LiangTaipei, March 17, 2011 (CENS)--Shipments of smartphones in Asia/Pacific (excluding Japan) region (APEJ) is forecast to hit 137 million units in 2011, the first time for shipments to break the 100 million mark in the region, according to IDC Asia/Pacific.
Melissa Chau, research manager at IDC Asia/Pacific, said that smartphones were a hot item in 2010, with more than double the shipments of 2009. In 2011, she added, IDC expects this fire to keep burning as mobile phone vendors race to get consumers on higher-margin devices, operators look to pull up revenues on mobile data, and mobile platform stakeholders battle to woo app developers.
Shipments of cellphones, which is made up of feature phones and smartphones, will rise by a five-year compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 34% in the APEJ region, nearly doubling to 942 million units from 551 million units shipped in 2010.
Both feature phones and smartphones had a strong showing in 2010, IDC said. Feature phones grew 17% year-on-year (YoY) in 2010, as the low-end with Chinese and local brands drove up the sub-US$100 segment. As a result, players like ZTE in China and G-Five in India moved up in the regional top-five rankings for 2010. However, by 2015, smartphones will grow eight times as fast as feature phones to reach 359 million units. Three in five mobile phones shipped in 2015 will be smartphones, up from one in five in 2010.
For 2011 and beyond, IDC expects a lot more brands to come in at a lower price point on Android, which will not only fuel demand in emerging markets, but will also make feature phone users across all markets consider upgrading to smartphones.
Up till now, Nokia model with the Symbian OS has been the undisputed smartphone market leader in APEJ. But IDC believes Android could overtake Symbian as soon as this year as Nokia's new products on Windows Phone won't be available until the end of the year.
APEJ's Smartphone Shipments by Vendors, 2009 vs 2010 | ||||
Rank | Vendor | 2009 | 2010 | Year-on-Year |
1 | Nokia | 71.1% | 53.7% | 58% |
2 | Apple | 7.6% | 12.6% | 247% |
3 | Samsung | 4.1% | 8.5% | 339% |
4 | RIM | 3.4% | 4.8% | 195% |
5 | HTC | 2.8% | 3.5% | 164% |
| Others | 11.0% | 16.9% | 220% |
| Total | 100% | 100% | 109% |
Source: IDC Asia/Pacific Quarterly Mobile Phone Tracker, 4Q10 | ||||