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In the United States, the high-end smartphone market has been flourishing very well over the last few years. With companies like Samsung and Apple consistently pushing out high-end smartphones into the market, the era of smartphone-craze is starting to slow down.
Supplying companies such as Qualcomm and MediaTek are starting to produce processors at a cheap and fast rate that the low-end smartphones are projected to become the next hot product of the market. While companies are growing well with in the United States, their attentions are now starting to divert to other countries such as India and China. In these markets, the budget smartphone has been gaining popularity quickly. With vendors able to push out Dual and Quad-core processors in the budget smartphones, the gap between the low and high end smartphones is now starting to shrink.
In a new study by ABIResearch, they estimate that budget smartphones that fall in the $200 range will grow from about 238 million units in 2013 to an estimated 758 million by 2018. In China, for example, Huawei is able to produce and push out affordable smartphones into the market while maintaining profit margins and slowly gaining market share. Recently, the Chinese vendor passed Apple in take 5% control of the market, while Apple fell below 5%.
ABI’s Jeff Orr says that “by 2018, ABI Research believes low cost smartphones will account for 44% of all smartphone shipments as the market looks to capture the next billion smartphone users.”
What do you think?
