India and Brazil will be in the top four countries for smartphone shipments by 2018.
China will displace the US as the largest smartphone market in 2013, ABI Research said on Tuesday.
Russia will become the 11th largest smartphone market in 2013 and will climb to 7th in 2018.
The emerging BRIC nations are displacing established markets such as the US and Japan as market leaders in terms of smartphone shipments.
Top 5 countries in 2018 will account for 51 percent of smartphone shipments while the BRIC countries will account for 33 percent of smartphone shipments.
By 2018, Western Europe and North Americas’ share of smartphone shipments will be 33 percent (equal to BRIC) down from 39 percent in 2013.
The growth of the smartphone market over the next five years will depend on operators and handset OEMs delivering optimized and price appropriate solutions to the BRIC consumers.
In terms of total handset shipments, the BRIC countries are already in the top five, but have lagged in their global smartphone share.
Meanwhile, Gartner revised its forecast on spending on devices in 2013 from 7.9 percent growth in Gartner’s previous forecast to 2.8 percent. The outlook for tablet revenue for 2013 is for growth of 2.8 percent, while mobile phone revenue is projected to increase 7.4 percent this year.
4G / LTE is one of the growth drivers of smartphone market.
“Smartphones have been a key product to support revenue growth at operators, though the challenge has always been to avoid spending all those gains on buying customers through higher subsidies,” said Susan Welsh de Grimaldo, director at Strategy Analytics’ Wireless Networks & Platforms service.
South Korea’s LG U+ has underperformed in 3G earlier and now achieved 15 percent year-on-year growth in ARPUs from 4G, said Strategy Analytics.
picture source: wikimapia.org
