Strategy Analytics: iPhone's share of global smartphone market reached 18% in Q1 2013

Consulting firm Strategy Analytics said in its latest report that Apple Inc.'s (AAPL) iPhone's share of the global smartphone market fell to 18% in the first quarter from 23% a year earlier, with shipment growth hitting a record low. The report said South Korea's Samsung Electronics Co. (005930.SE) had a 33% share of the global smartphone market in the quarter, a record high for the company and up from 29% a year earlier.

Neil Mawston, executive director of Strategy Analytics, said in a report that Samsung Electronics' smartphone shipments in the first quarter were nearly double those of Apple, and its shipment growth was eight times that of Apple. He said that Apple's strategy of only focusing on high-end iPhones has reached a natural bottleneck, and the company needs to expand deeper in large markets such as China, or should launch a low-priced iPhone for the mass market.

The report showed that Samsung Electronics' global smartphone shipments in the first quarter increased by 56% to a record high of 69.4 million units; Apple's smartphone shipments were 37.4 million units, up 7%, the lowest year-on-year growth rate in history.

Demand for low-priced smartphones is growing rapidly in China, which has overtaken the U.S. as the world’s largest smartphone market. Competition in the low- and mid-range smartphone market in China is fierce, with Samsung Electronics leading the market share ahead of Huawei Technologies Co. and Lenovo Group Ltd. (0992.HK).

South Korea's LG Electronics Inc. (066570.SE) joined the world's top three smartphone makers for the first time in the first quarter, increasing its market share to 4.9% from 3.2%. Huawei ranked fourth with 4.8%, up from 3.2% in the same period last year.