The American market research and analysis firm IDC has just posted its latest smartphone market forecast for the 2014-2018 period. One of the main highlights of the report is the forecasted great jump in market share for the Windows Phone platform and decline for Android and iOS platforms. So far, Windows Phone hasn’t been doing well in terms of sales and its global market share hasn’t been able to cross the 3% mark since the past many quarters. IDC believes Windows Phone will command a 5.6% market share by 2018, with a compounded annual growth rate of 31.4%.
Android market share is expected to drop to 80.0% from 82.3% this year and Apple’s iOS market share is also expected to decline from 13.8% currently to 12.8%. The compounded annual growth rate for the two platforms would be much lower than Windows Phone, at 9.0% and 7.8% respectively. Its share in the revenue pie is also claimed to grow to around 4.2% from the current 2.0% figure. Android on the other hand is expected to see its revenue share decline from 66.6% right now to 60.9%. Apple might lose market share, but its revenue share might actually go up from the current 30.4% to 33.8%.
The global smartphone market has seen tremendous growth in the past few quarters, but going forward, IDC expects the growth to slow down considerably. Between the 2014 – 2018 period, the smartphone market would grow at a compounded annual growth rate of around 9.8%, which is significantly lower than the growth figure this year. Global shipment of smartphones by 2018 could reach 1.9 billion units, up from 1.3 billion units this year.
IDC forecasts that Android OEMs could find it difficult to maintain profitability by 2018 due to the increased competition from the Chinese players and the crashing prices. As prices are brought down by the smaller Chinese players, the bigger OEMs might find it increasingly difficult to compete with them on the pricing front in the next few years.
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