Global smartphone shipments reached 420 million units in the first half of 2013 and are expected to top nearly 950 million units for the full year, Digitimes Research has estimated.
The supply of mobile RAM and NAND flash chips, which was tight and costly in the first half of 2013 in part due to price manipulation by suppliers, will ease in the second half, but that for HD and Full HD displays will remain tight in latter half of the year.
Shipment growth in China will be limited in the second half as vendors will continue to digest their high inventories of 3.5-inch TD-SCDMA models, but shipments in India, Russia, Eastern Europe, Southeast Asia and Latin America will remain robust during the period.
Some handset design houses and OEMs in China have been shifting their focus to overseas markets, alleviating price competition in the homeland. Meanwhile, the top-four telecom carriers in the US have begun offering one-year subscription contracts, which is expected to stir up demand for high-end models.
Four out of the top-10 smartphone vendors in 2013 will be China-based brands, and Taiwan-based HTC will be excluded from the top-10 ranking. Samsung Electronics, Apple and LG Electronics will be the top-three vendors, with Lenovo, Sony Mobile Communications and Huawei taking the fourth to sixth positions. ZTE will rank seventh, followed by Yulong (Coolpad), Nokia and BlackBerry, with each of the last four vendors shipping about 30 million smartphones in the year, Digitimes Research estimated.
This article is an excerpt from a Chinese-language Digitimes Research report. Click here if you are interested in receiving more information about the content and price of a translated version of the full report.