Brace yourself for an industry first. Smartphones have finally overtaken their feature brethren for the first time this first quarter of the year. Times sure have changed.
This is as momentous an occasion as cellphones outselling those plain old telephone sets.
In fact, in what is traditionally considered a slow quarter, the worldwide mobile phone market registered a 4 percent growth over Q1 2012. The total number of mobile phones that moved in the first quarter this year amount to 418.6 million units, compared to 402.4 million units a year back.
This was revealed by the data compiled by IDC (International Data Corporation).
Statistics show that smartphone vendors have shipped 216.2 million units worldwide in the first quarter. This marks the first time smartphones made over 50 percent of the overall mobile shipments, though in terms of numbers this was still 5.1 percent lower than Q4 of 2012.
Samsung was the clear leader once again as the Korean company shipped more smartphones than Apple, Nokia, LG and ZTE combined. Nokia claimed the second position with an impressive 14.8 share of the pie — an imposing 4.9 percent ahead of the next in the list, Apple.
LG finally made a return to the top five, thanks to the success of its Nexus 4 and Optimus G devices.
In case you were looking for BlackBerry, stop looking. The company dropped out of the top five and ZTE took its place with a 30 percent increase in revenue this quarter. Expect an increase in Blackberry’s market share next quarter though, when its Blackberry 10 smartphones roll out globally.
