Telecom Lead Asia: 
are driving the mobile phone market in Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand, Indonesia, Vietnam, Cambodia and the Philippines.
In the last twelve month, mobile phones sales in these developing economies touched more than 118 million units.
The size of the mobile phone sector is almost $13.7 billion, according to the latest results from GfK Asia.
Consumers in this region bought additional 10 million units of feature phones—12 percent more than a year ago.
Smartphone consumer purchase grew 78 percent across the seven countries. Smartphones now account for over 61 percent of the sector’s overall value in Southeast Asia.
“Feature phones still reign as the more prevalent mobile phone type used by consumers in the region’s emerging markets,” said Gerard Tan, account director for Digital Technology.
Smartphones adoption is escalating at a rapid pace with individual country’s growth rates reported in the range of 42 to 326 percent.
In Indonesia, the combined feature phone and smartphone volume sales grew 26 percent.
Feature phone market increase 19 percent in Indonesia, while smartphone sales grew 56 percent in the last 12 months.
Nearly four in every five mobile phones (78 percent) sold in the country are still feature phones due to their greater affordability, increasing number of consumers here are embracing smartphones which registered soaring sales of 4.5 million units over the previous year.
The Philippines has reported growth of 326 percent in smartphone volume sales. It is also the country with the highest jump in smartphone market share within a year, from 9 to 24 percent.
In less developed markets such as Thailand and Vietnam, growth is still relatively low at 19 and 11 percent respectively.
Consumers in Southeast Asia spent some USD 8.75 billion on almost 29 million smartphones within the last 12 months, translating to 61 and 78 percent growth in volume and value.
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Meanwhile, China is set to become the global leader in terms of smartphone shipment with 26.5 percent of all smartphone shipments in 2012. China will outrun the U.S as the global leader in smartphone shipments, which will account for 17.8 percent of all smartphone shipments in 2012, according to IDC. Smartphone penetration in China will be augmented by strong end-user demand, which is being supported by rapid roll-outs of 3G networks by all three telecom service providers.
editor@telecomlead.com
