Shares of smartphone makers dropped recently post recent flow of smartphone maker statement on the industry shipment. United States users are active user of smartphone and one of the largest markets for smartphones device manufacturers. Analysts are predicting sluggish growth in coming years.
IDC predicted global smartphone shipments to total 918.6 million units in 2013. That translates 29 percent year over year growth. The growth rate in 2013 slowed down from last year's annual growth rate of 44 percent. BRIC market markets such as China, India and Brazil are projected to be key areas for expansion in the smartphone market. The home of expected 33% smartphone shipment is China and would be a catalyst for future growth or de-growth in smartphone segment growth.
Analyst expect that China's smartphone consumption rate to maintain the pace and continue to be big drivers to keep the market increasing as it leads the way towards low priced smartphone availability and transition towards 4G network to tap in data hungry users.
Recently analyst lowered their forecasts for Apple post their result and tentative two plus quarter delayed timeline for next generation iPhone. Most of the analyst also reduced to rating for Apple equity and its price target. It is visible that device form factor driven hype of Apple got redirected towards company strength to maintain or exceed double digit growth potential.
The recent cutting edge smart phone from Blackberry and Nokia which is capable of targeting and fulfill prosumer requirement and their strong collaboration on the technology front forced smartphone players to realign their strategy. The recent flurry of low end smartphone by Nokia and high end device launch would definitely play spoiler for leaders device margin and would be recapturing market share which is clearly visible in recently concluded quarter.
Back in 2002-2004, when camera phone was launched by Motorola, Samsung and Nokia, it generated replacement cycle phase and user were more interested in buying handset to experience the picture quality and share over Internet with their near and dear one.
The same is getting factored in where user already experienced the rich experience of using social media through smartphone and shifted towards prosumer behavioral pattern of using smartphone for end to end purpose.
It would be interesting to see battle between device form factors vs. device as technology enabler.
