Cost of smartphones is impacting very highly the increase of adoption of the same in emerging markets as seen in the recently announced numbers by Research Agency GFK Asia. GFK Asia reports a surge in smartphones sales volume of 61% within the past 9 months in South East Asia.
Focus countries include Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia, Thailand, Philippines, Vietnam and Cambodia, and in the first three quarters of this year has seen consumers spend USD 10.8 Billion on 41.5 million smartphones. The figures were Last year were $7.54 billion on 25.8 million smartphones. 14.8 million of these smartphones have been sold in Indonesia with a market value of USD 3.33 billion. Thailand comes second with 7.2 million smartphones sold while Malaysia had 6.4 million smartphones sold.
Android takes the lion’s share with 72% market-share in 6 of the 7 markets with Philippines, Malaysia and Singapore having 91%, 83% and 81% of total smartphone sales being Android smartphones. Indonesia has the lowest Android sales with 60% up from 37% last year same period. Globally the figures of smartphones sales tend to also favour Android with 75% sold in Q1 of 2012.
It’s worthy of note that the Phablets are the fad in South East Asia. These are devices with screen sizes of between 5.6 inches and 6.00 inches. There have been over 460,000 phablets sold in the market from mid-2013 with numerous models sold in the market that are manufactured locally.
