Worldwide smartphone sales to end users reached 250.2 million units in the third quarter of this year, up 45.8 percent from the third quarter of 2012, and smartphones sales accounted for 55 percent of overall mobile phone sales during the period.

Worldwide mobile phone sales to end users totalled 455.6 million units in the third quarter, an increase of 5.7 percent from the same period last year, according to Gartner.

Asia/Pacific led the growth in both markets - the smartphone segment with 77.3 percent increase and the mobile phone segment with 11.9 percent growth.

The other regions to show an increase in the overall mobile phone market were Western Europe, which returned to growth for the first time this year, and the Americas, the report said.

“Sales of feature phones continued to decline and the decrease was more pronounced in markets where the average selling price (ASP) for feature phones was much closer to the ASP of affordable smartphones,” said Anshul Gupta, principal research analyst at Gartner. “In markets such as China and Latin America, demand for feature phones fell significantly as users rushed to replace their old models with smartphones.”

Gartner analysts said global mobile phone sales are on pace to reach 1.81 billion units in 2013, a 3.4 percent increase from 2012. “We will see several new tablets enter the market for the holiday season, and we expect consumers in mature markets will favour the purchase of smaller-sized tablets over the replacement of their older smartphones” said Gupta.

While Samsung’s share was flat in the third quarter of 2013, Samsung increased its lead over Apple in the global smartphone market. The launch of the Samsung Note 3 helped reaffirm Samsung as the clear leader in the large display smartphone market, which it pioneered.

Lenovo’s sales of smartphones grew to 12.9 million units, up 84.5 percent year-on-year. It constantly raised share in the Chinese smartphone market.

Apple’s smartphone sales reached 30.3 million units in the third quarter of 2013, up 23.2 percent from a year ago. “While the arrival of the new iPhones 5s and 5c had a positive impact on overall sales, such impact could have been greater had they not started shipping late in the quarter. While we saw some inventory built up for the iPhone 5c, there was good demand for iPhone 5s with stock out in many markets,” said Gupta.

In the smartphone operating system (OS) market, Android surpassed 80 percent market share in the third quarter of 2013, which helped extend its leading position.

“However, the winner of this quarter is Microsoft which grew 123 percent. Microsoft announced the intent to acquire Nokia’s devices and services business, which we believe will unify effort and help drive appeal of Windows ecosystem,” said Gupta.  – TradeArabia News Service