Asia/Pacific excluding Japan (APEJ) region is expected to register smartphone shipments of 137 million units in 2011, the first time for shipments to break the 100 million mark in the region, according to a new report by IDC.
The report revealed that the mobile phone shipments consisting of feature phones and smartphones, will rise by a five-year compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 34% in the APEJ region, nearly doubling to 942 million units from 551 million units shipped in 2010.
Feature phones grew 17% year-on-year in 2010 as the low-end with Chinese and local brands driving up the sub-$100 segment.
As a result, players like ZTE in China and G-Five in India moved up in the regional top 5 rankings for 2010.
However, the research firm opines that by 2015, smartphones will grow eight times as fast as feature phones to reach 359 million units with three in five mobile phones shipped in 2015 will be smartphones, up from one in five in 2010.
In South Korea, smartphones have cranked up by a factor of 10 in 2010, due to Apple and Samsung while Nokia focused on bringing Symbian OS phones down in price below $200 for emerging markets like India and Vietnam.
For 2011 and beyond, IDC expects that more brands to come in at a lower price point on Android, which will help pull up demand in emerging markets, and also make feature phone users across all markets consider upgrading to smartphones.
Further, Android is expected to overtake Symbian this year as Nokia’s new products on Windows Phone won’t be available until the end of the year, the research firm said.
IDC Asia/Pacific domain research group client devices research manager Melissa Chau said smartphones were a hot item in 2010, with more than double the shipments of 2009.
"In 2011, IDC expects this fire to keep burning as mobile phone vendors race to get consumers on higher-margin devices, operators look to pull up revenues on mobile data, and mobile platform stakeholders’ battle to woo app developers," Chau said.
