Mobile handsets market has seen an exponential growth since its first commercial launch in 1983. There were 12 million global mobile phone subscribers in 1990 and by the end of 2010, the number of mobile phone subscribers reached 5.2 billion. However, the growth had slowed a bit between 2006 and 2009 on the account of economic slowdown and lack of strong telecommunication infrastructure in emerging countries. Smartphones are fast becoming a viable alternative to feature phones, PDAs and laptops, offering phone features such as voice and SMS coupled with mobile internet applications, multimedia functionality, high speed data processing capabilities, and inbuilt GPS capabilities.

The global smartphones market registered growth at a brisk pace, accounting for 22% of the global mobile handset sales in 2010. This high growth has been backed by rapid technology developments such as high-speed internet browsing, sophisticated personal and professional data management, and the evolution of 3G and 4G network technologies. The Asian regions, especially, India and China have emerged as smartphones hotspots with the continuous development of cellular markets and the increasing 3G penetrations and expenditure on consumer electronics across the region. In relatively saturated markets such as the North America and Europe, operator’s subsidies and carrier wars have been fueling the growth of the smartphones market in the region. The global smartphones market is estimated to reach $258.9 billion in 2015 from about $85.1 billion in 2010.

The global smartphones device market is segmented into the submarkets for business smartphones and consumer smartphones. The latter is the larger and faster-growing market, accounting for approximately 3/4th of the global smartphones revenues. However, the business smartphones segment is expected have a faster growth in future owing to the continuing mobilization of enterprise. In both the segments, touchscreen has emerged as the preferred interface, representing 52% of global shipments (in 2010), followed by the keypad input type with a 34% share in the same year.

Market participants’ strategies vary by geography due to differing method of payments, subsidies, and levels of competition among vendors and operators. Players in prepaid subscriber market (without handset subsidies) are focusing on promoting value-added services and subsidized data plans. In competitive postpaid subscribers markets (with handset subsidies), players are offering attractive unlimited data plans and a large variety of smartphones models with exclusive distribution strategies.

The briefing on the global mobile phones & smartphones market will benefit mobile handset manufacturers and vendors, mobile chip manufacturers, smartphones manufacturers & suppliers, operating systems and chipset developers, smartphones device manufacturers, mobile handsets & smartphones accessories manufacturers, end-users such as large enterprise and small and medium business (SMB)

The success of the smartphones is tied directly with OS performance, brand, sales, and the amount of marketing support provided. However, market participants’ strategies vary by geography due to differing method of payments, subsidies, and levels of competition among vendors and operators. Players in prepaid subscriber market (without handset subsidies) are focusing on promoting value-added services and subsidized data plans. In competitive postpaid subscribers markets (with handset subsidies), players are offering attractive unlimited data plans and a large variety of smartphones models with exclusive distribution strategies. Notes a MarketsandMarkets analyst;“Lately, application store has emerged as game changer for smartphones marketers and is expected to remain the major differentiating factor among the players for the next decade”.

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