GfK: Smartphones give a new boost to the telephony market

GfK presented its results for 2012 at Mobile World Congress Barcelona and showed that the worldwide demand for mobile phones increased significantly in 2012. Last year posted a first: on Christmas, for the 1st time, more smartphones than mobile phones were sold. This positive trend is due to more and more attractive prices for smartphones. A series of new premium characteristics also contributed to stimulating the sales of the devices with medium and top prices.

In 2012, the smartphone demand increased globally by 56%, to 720M devices sold. In the same time, standard mobile phones market decreased 14%, to Euro 886M.In the end, the global mobil phones sales made by retailers increased by 7% in 2012.

Smartphones demand is in accentuated increase, especially in China. In 2012, the sales increase year per year was of 34% in europe, while in China, Hong Kong and  Taiwan, sales increased rapidly by 133%.

In 2012, two out of three sold phones in this region were smartphones. Besides the fact that the Chinese market posts the highest growth rate, it also holds the highest share of smartphones on the global mobile phones market. In Europe, only 50% from mobile phones sales are dued to smartphones.  Standard mobile phones continue to dominate Latin America, Middle East and Africa.

Through its retail panel, GfK collects periodically data on mobile and fixed phones, tablets, mobile internet modems and accessories for mobile phones, in over 90 countries all over the world.  This analysis is based on info on the evolution of telephony market in 2012.