Following last week’s Mobile World Congress event in Barcelona, Spain, where Samsung Electronics (005930KS) and other vendors sought to top one another in the smartphone field, analysts at research firm IDC remind us that this year will see smartphone sales rise to 50.1% of all mobile phone sales, surpassing the 41% that IDC had previously reported for all of 2012.
IDC argues falling prices, the roll-out of “4G” wireless networks, and what it calls the “widening” of “smartphone strata” are the main factors propelling smartphone sales. The firm predicts 918.6 million smartphones to be sold this year.
The “balance of smartphone demand is gradually shifting” to developing markets and away from developed markets, the analysts write.
And even China, the largest smartphone market, won’t be the most fruitful market for growth, despite its still torrid pace.
China is expected to see 301 million units this year, besting the U.S.’s 137.5 million units. But Some other markets will see much higher growth, with Brazil, in fifth place and India, in sixth place. Moreover, projecting out to 2017, the firm sees 52% growth in China from this year through 2017, but 129% growth in Brazil and an amazing 460% rise by 2017 in India, which, at 155.6 million units by that year, would make India the third-largest smartphone market behind the U.S.
As for the U.S., as smartphones find fewer new buyers, IDC sees most of the action being in operating system switchers:
Underpinning its growth [in the U.S.] is the constantly shifting operating system landscape, in which resurgent [BlackBerry (BBRY)] BlackBerry and [Microsoft's (MSFT)] Windows Phone aim to gain salience against incumbents [Google's (GOOG)] Android and Apple (AAPL) iOS.
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