Gartner: Global mobile phone sales in Q1 2013 totaled nearly 426 million units, up 0.7% year-on-year

On May 16, 2013, market research firm Gartner released a report on global mobile phone sales in the first quarter of 2013. Gartner's report believes that in the first quarter of 2013, mobile phone sales in markets around the world except the Asia-Pacific region showed a downward trend, and the slow upgrade cycle of feature phones may drag down the smartphone market this year. The main contents of the Gartner report are as follows.

In the first quarter of 2013, the global sales of mobile phones to end users totaled nearly 426 million units, a year-on-year increase of 0.7%; the global sales of smartphones totaled 210 million units, a year-on-year increase of 42.9%. In the first quarter of this year, Asia Pacific was the only region to show an increase in mobile phone sales, with a year-on-year increase of 6.4% in the region.

Gartner analyst Anshul Gupta said: "In the first quarter of 2013, more than 226 million mobile phones were sold to end users in the Asia-Pacific region. In addition, mobile phone sales in the Chinese market increased by 7.5% in the first quarter of this year; mobile phone sales in the Chinese market accounted for about 25.7% of the global total mobile phone sales, an increase of nearly 2 percentage points year-on-year. In the Asia-Pacific market, Chinese and local mobile phone manufacturers have been meeting the needs of buyers by providing high-quality and low-priced mobile phones, which are generally 2.5G rather than 3G. In the smartphone market, local and Chinese mobile phone manufacturers' mobile phone sales grew rapidly in the first quarter of 2013, accounting for about 29% of the region, compared with 13.2% in the same period last year."

According to Gartner data, in the first quarter of 2013, mobile phone sales in Europe, the Middle East and Africa (EMEA) fell by 3.6%, with mobile phone sales in North America and Latin America falling by 9.5% and 3.8% respectively, and mobile phone sales in the Japanese market also falling by 7.3%.

Samsung is still the world's largest mobile phone manufacturer in terms of mobile phone manufacturing. Its mobile phone sales increased by 13% in the first quarter of this year. Among them, Samsung's smartphone share reached 30.8%, an increase of 3.2% year-on-year. Gupta said: "We expect Samsung's new Galaxy S4 phone to be very popular, even though this phone is just a slight evolution of the Galaxy S3, not a revolutionary change."

Nokia's mobile phone sales share fell by 4.9% in the first quarter of this year, mainly due to the sharp decline in the company's feature phone sales. Although Nokia's WP phone sales increased month-on-month to 5.1 million units, Nokia still did not see growth in the smartphone field. In the first quarter of 2013, Nokia's position in the smartphone market had fallen to 10th place, compared with 8th place in the fourth quarter of last year.

In the first quarter of 2013, Apple sold 38.3 million mobile phones to end users. The Chinese market has become a major driving force for the growth of Apple's mobile phone sales. According to Gartner data, in the first quarter of this year, Apple's mobile phone sales in the Chinese mainland market alone reached 7 million units, mainly benefiting from Apple's lower-priced iPhone 4 products. Gupta said: "Apple will face challenges in the next two quarters. It is expected that Apple will find it difficult to launch new products before the third quarter of this year."

In the first quarter of 2013, LG Electronics surpassed ZTE to become the world's fourth largest mobile phone manufacturer. ZTE performed slightly worse and failed to increase its smartphone sales. In the first quarter of 2013, ZTE's smartphone sales were 7.9 million units, a decrease of 5.1% from the previous quarter.

According to Gartner, in the first quarter of 2013, global mobile phone sales totaled 425,821.6 million units, compared with 422,955.4 million units in the same period last year. Smartphone sales accounted for about 49.3% of all mobile phone sales in the first quarter of this year, compared with 34.8% in the same period last year and 44% in the fourth quarter of last year. In other words, in the first quarter of this year, the share of feature phones shrank to 21.8%. In the first quarter of this year, Samsung's mobile phone sales reached 100,657.7 million units, accounting for about 23.6% of the global mobile phone sales; Nokia ranked second with a total sales of about 63,215,200 units, accounting for 14.8% of the global total sales; Apple ranked third with a total sales of 38,331,800 units, accounting for 9% of the global total sales; Lenovo ranked ninth with a total sales of 7,778,900 units, accounting for 1.8% of the global total sales.

In terms of smartphone sales, according to Gartner data, in the first quarter of 2013, the total global smartphone sales reached 210,046.1 million units, compared with 147,020.2 million units in the same period last year. In the first quarter of this year, Samsung's smartphone sales still ranked first, reaching 64.74 million units, accounting for about 30.8% of the global total smartphone sales; Apple's smartphone sales reached 38.3318 million units, accounting for about 18.2% of the global total smartphone sales; LG ranked third, with smartphone sales reaching 10.0804 million units, accounting for about 4.8% of the global total smartphone sales; Huawei and ZTE ranked fourth and fifth, with smartphone sales of 9.3342 million and 7.8833 million units, accounting for about 4.4% and 3.8% of the global total smartphone sales respectively.

In terms of various operating systems, in the first quarter of 2013, sales of smartphones equipped with Android still ranked first, reaching 156.186 million units, accounting for about 74.4% of the global total smartphone sales; sales of smartphones equipped with iOS reached 38.3318 million units, accounting for about 18.2% of the global total smartphone sales; sales of smartphones equipped with BlackBerry system reached 6.2186 million units, accounting for about 3% of the global total smartphone sales; sales of smartphones equipped with Microsoft system reached 5.9892 million units, accounting for about 2.9% of the global total smartphone sales; sales of smartphones equipped with Bada system reached 1.3708 million units, accounting for about 0.7% of the global total smartphone sales; sales of smartphones equipped with Symbian system reached 1.3494 million units, accounting for about 0.6% of the global total smartphone sales; sales of smartphones equipped with other systems reached 600,300 units, accounting for about 0.3% of the global total smartphone sales.