Q3 2013 Sees Growth for Android, Windows Phone, Decline for iPhone

This year’s third quarter sees the Android operating system steadily making strides as it accounts for 81 percent of total smartphone shipments or 211.6 million smartphone units, while Apple’s iPhone drops from a year-ago 14.4 percent to this quarter’s 12.9 percent, according to the International Data Corporation (IDC) Worldwide Quarterly Mobile Phone Tracker.

3Q13 also marks a high point for Microsoft’s Windows Phone as it registers a year-over-year growth of 156 percent. A year ago, shipment volumes of Windows Phone started out with a small base of 3.7 million handset units. The total market share of Windows Phone remains less than five percent. According to IDC, Windows Phone has grown its market share to 3.6 percent, which represents a year-ago increase of two percent. But with the now combined Microsoft-Nokia effort, the Windows Phone platform can have multiple price points and tiers.

Ramon Llamas, research manager of IDC’s Mobile Phone team, singled out price as an essential factor driving the success of Android and Windows Phone in this year’s third quarter. “Despite their differences in market share, they both have one important factor behind their success: price,” said Llamas. “Both platforms have a selection of devices available at prices low enough to be affordable to the mass market, and it is the mass market that is driving the entire market forward.”

In the third quarter of this year, the whole smartphone space has grown 39.9 percent year over year, according to the IDC report.

As the appeal of more affordable mobile devices grows, the average selling prices (ASPs) of smartphones have showed continued decline. The ASP of $317 for 3Q13 resulted in a drop of 12.5 percent. A sizeable influx of phablets, or large-screen smartphones with screen sizes between five inches and seven inches has entered the market as well. Since phablets normally come with a higher price tag than their small-screen counterparts, their 3Q13 ASP was $443, a drop of 22.8 percent from the 3Q12 ASP of $573.

“Almost all successful Android vendors have added one or more 5- 7-inch phablets to their product portfolios,” said Ryan Reith, program director of IDC’s Worldwide Quarterly Mobile Phone Tracker. “And Nokia’s recent announcement of the Lumia 1320 and 1520 put them in the category as well. In 3Q13, phablet shipments accounted for 21 percent of the smartphone market, up from just 3 percent a year ago. We believe the absence of a large-screen device may have contributed to Apple's inability to grow share in the third quarter.” (KOM) Link. Link.