The mobile device market will grow steadily but unspectacularly over the next few years.
we forecast that over 2 billion handsets will be shipped in 2015, just nine years after the industry surpassed the 1 billion annual shipment mark. Emerging economies remain the engine of shipment volume growth.
4G LTE transition will be a key market driver through over the next few years with China the principal catalyst.
Smartphones are rapidly eclipsing feature phones. Feature phones are currently the mainstay of the Ultra Low Cost Handset (ULCH) market but in price bands above US$70 low cost Android products are becoming dominant. However by 2016 the price distribution of smartphones will start to resemble that of feature phones in 2008/9.
The topline growth hides significant underlying dynamics however as rapid smartphone adoption and the roll out of 4G LTE will create significant opportunities. However the market continues to be characterized by aggressive pricing and hardware commoditization which makes creating sustainable differentiation challenging.
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