Smartphone shipments reach record 250 million in Q3 2013

HAMPSHIRE, UK: Leading hi-tech mobile analysts Juniper Research estimates that the number of smartphone shipments exceeded a quarterly record of 250 million in Q3 2013, representing a y-o-y growth of almost 49 percent from Q3 2012, and q-o-q growth of 10 percent.

Samsung now accounts for a third of all smartphones shipped with an estimated 85 million smartphones - a record for the company. The company reported a 26 percent growth in profit, driven by an increase of smartphone sales in both Premium and Economy segments.

The iPhone accounted for 1 in 7 smartphone shipments during Q3 2013, representing a quarterly growth of 8 percent from Q2 2013. Juniper's latest research forecasts that Apple and Samsung will continue to dominate the global market, shipping 17 percent more smartphones in 2018 than were shipped globally by all vendors in 2012.

Differentiation strategies

These top end players are expected to continue to witness impressive growth next quarter due to seasonality, however Juniper expects a steady decline in growth thereafter especially in maturing markets. At this point, differentiation becomes vital to continued success, and the strategies used to achieve differentiation need to be different for maturing and emerging markets.

Juniper notes that increasingly vendors will be required to anticipate customers ‘future needs', whilst at the same time creating ‘new needs' that customers will find desirable. This will become of paramount importance as new customers become a scarce resource and vendor churn becomes a major factor.

Nokia building momentum, BlackBerry gets the blue

Nokia shipped a record 8.8 million Lumia devices and nearly 6 million Asha smartphones in Q3 2013, together exceeding LG for the second time this year. LG maintained its smartphone shipment pace compared to the previous quarter, shipping another 12 million in Q3 2013, representing a 24 percent increases year-over-year.

BlackBerry's recent results - which run to a different financial schedule - are expected to see them ship just under 4 million smartphones in Q3 2013. In the three months to the end of August 2010, BlackBerry clocked up some 12 million smartphone shipments and more than $4.6 billion in revenues; in its most recent quarter, smartphone shipments had fallen to a paltry 3.7 million against revenues of less than $1.6 billion; the costs of sales were now exceeding the revenues earned.

Huawei, ZTE and LG together shipped over 37 million smartphones in Q3 2013, accounting for a combined market share of 15 percent.