Samsung And Apple Are Both Under Pressure @ 2013

Samsung retained its lead position overall by shipping 106 million handsets of which 60 million were smartphones in Q4 and capturing 31 per cent of total smartphone shipments. In 2012 Samsung grew its handset shipments by 21.6 per cent and its smartphone shipments by 123.8 per cent.

Despite missing most analyst estimates in Q4, Apple grew its smartphone shipment share to 24.5 per cent, up from 16.4 per cent in Q3. Apple shipped 47.8 million iPhones in Q4 bringing its 2012 annual total to 135.8 million. Apple’s 2012 annual shipment growth declined from 96 per cent in 2011 to 46% in 2012.

“It is clear that the iPhone’s hyper-growth has ended, and ABI Research believes that Apple’s market share will peak in 2013 at 22 per cent,” said Michael Morgan, mobile devices senior analyst. “Unless Apple is willing to trade iPhone margins for low cost iPhone shipments, Apple’s handset market share will become dependent on customer loyalty.”

Looking at the rest of the pack, Nokia shipped 86.3 million handsets and 6.6 million smartphones in Q4 while RIM’s shipments of smartphones declined to 6.9 million. ZTE had an excellent Q4 with 20.7 million handset shipments and 11.2 million smartphone shipments.

Samsung retained its lead position overall by shipping 106 million handsets of which 60 million were smartphones in Q4 and capturing 31 per cent of total smartphone shipments.

Apple may not have seen good times in 2012 but 2013 promises to be great for the Cupertino-based giant. According to the latest market forecasts by market intelligence firm, ABI Research nearly 196 million smartphones and 451 million handsets were shipped during Q4 2012. This brings 2012 annual totals to 653 million smartphone and 1.6 billion handset shipments, representing a 36 per cent and 2 per cent growth rate. Smartphones accounted for 43 per cent of all handset shipments in Q4, which pushed smartphones to 41 per cent of all shipments in 2012.