Molouk Y. Ba-Isa Saudi Gazette According to market intelligence provider TrendForce, with component costs continually decreasing, many mobile phone makers are developing entry to mid-level smartphones in an effort to increase market share. That's good news for consumers who would like to purchase a smartphone, but are put off by the ridiculous prices of many models. Smartphone shipments are forecast to exceed 650 million units in 2012, more than 40 percent growth compared to the 460 million units shipped in 2011. Looking towards 2013, as 3G network infrastructure gradually becomes more widespread and mobile phone prices drop, TrendForce estimates global smartphone shipments will exceed 830 million units next year. Worth noting is that Chinese brands are expected to see especially strong smartphone shipments, with 50 percent growth projected for 2013 - much more than the global average. Despite the demand, not all smartphone vendors are thriving. Nokia, Research In Motion (RIM) and Motorola are all in trouble. IDC's Worldwide Quarterly Mobile Phone Tracker reported that Nokia is no longer in the top five global smartphone manufacturers, although globally it still is the second largest mobile phone vendor overall. IDC noted that for Q3 2012, Samsung was both the largest smartphone and mobile phone vendor globally. For smartphone sales, Apple is in second place followed by RIM, ZTE and HTC. Samsung is selling well in large part due to its broad, deep and refreshed Android portfolio. The company has also announced that it will bring out multiple mid-range and mass-market smartphones, including a new Windows Phone, the ATIV S. Apple is likely to continue racking up profits as well in the coming quarter, if it can move the iPhone 5 into more markets. The year end outlook is not so bright for RIM, which has delayed the first shipments of Blackberry 10 handsets until 2013. Motorola, once the number three smartphone vendor, is having a makeover under its new owner, Google. Costs are being slashed and new models introduced. The latest casualty as 4,000 staff are made redundant is James King, Motorola's brand marketing and creative director, Europe, Middle East, Africa and South East Asia. Samsung is the current global star but it needs to retain its agility because the Chinese powerhouse that is Lenovo, is hot on its heels. In 2012's third quarter, Lenovo became the world's number one PC maker. TrendForce reported that Lenovo smartphones have only been on sale since the second quarter of this year, but they have already captured 14.7 percent of smartphone sales in China - the largest smartphone market in the world. Samsung, the smartphone leader in China, has just 15.5 percent of that market. Chinese smartphone shipments will exceed 200 million units in 2012, nearly 30 percent of the global shipment forecast. Lenovo claims to be learning quickly how to best position its mobility products and plans to bring its low-cost smartphones to emerging markets such as India, the Philippines and Indonesia next, where it will go head-to-head with Samsung. All of this is advantageous for consumers who are seeing the introduction of a wide range of entry-level smartphones priced at about $100. And those prices are about to get even lower. Britain's ARM has just unveiled a chip design that offers the same computing power as the chips in today's high-end smartphones, but uses five times less energy. ARM claims that the Cortex-A7 chip will allow sub-$100 smartphones to be on the market by 2013. Why is all this important? Because it's part of the global movement to bridge the digital divide and connect the next one billion consumers in the developing world to the Internet. The mobility trend is already evident in the developed world where IDC found that consumers are migrating away from PC-based Internet usage and are increasingly using mobile devices as their default gateway to the Internet. The US leads the mobility trend, with Western Europe and Japan only about two years behind. Ericsson noted that smartphone subscriptions reached around 700 million in 2011and are expected to total about three billion in 2017. Samsung announced last week that it plans to double its smartphone marketing in Africa as part of a strategy to bring more consumers online, forging partnerships with telecoms particularly in Sub-Saharan Africa.
