Smartphone Growth Predictions In 2014: $150 Billion

The global smartphone market is expected to grow in the coming five years. According to a recent report by Markets and Markets, this growth is largely fueled by the need of security on smartphones due to increase in constant connectivity and demand for high bandwidth applications. This growth is particularly higher in geographies such as Europe and APJ due to the most widely used mobile payments application, especially for making payments for mobile digital & physical goods.

MarketsandMarkets expects the global smartphone security market to grow from $387.15 million in 2010 to $2964.89 million by 2016. Global smartphone security market for Android OS is the fastest growing one with a CAGR of 65.05% from 2011 to 2016 due to increasing number of applications.

The global smartphones market is growing at a brisk pace, already accounting for 14% of the global mobile phone market. This high growth has been backed by rapid technology developments such as high-speed internet browsing, sophisticated personal and professional data management, and the evolution of 3G and 4G network technologies. The Asian region, especially, India and China have emerged as smartphones hotspot with the continuous development of cellular markets and the increasing 3G penetrations and expenditure on consumer electronics across the region. In relatively saturated markets, such as the North America and Europe, operator's subsidies and carrier wars has been fuelling the growth of the smartphones market in the region. The global smartphones market is estimated to reach $150.3 billion in 2014 from about $55.4 billion in 2009.

While the economic recession adversely affected the global markets; the global smartphones market was one of the very few markets that did not have impact of the global meltdown. The smartphones market with an annual growth rate of 12.8% from 2008 to 2009 is expected to grow by 26% over 2009 to become a $69.8 billion market in 2010.

The global smartphones device market is segmented into the submarkets for business smartphones and consumer smartphones. The latter is the larger and faster-growing market, accounting for approximately 3/4th of the global smartphones revenues. However, the business smartphones segment is expected have a faster growth in the future owing to the continuing mobilization of enterprise. In both the segments, touchscreen has emerged as the preferred interface, representing 39.6% of global shipments, followed by the keypad input type with a 31.2% share.

The overall smartphone security market is expected to increase with a CAGR of 43.9%, major driving force being, high penetration of smartphones and rise in number of smartphone applications while lack of awareness among the masses remains the restraining factor. Key issue in the industry today is battery overdrain and mobile handset and security software incompatibility.

Global Smartphones Market is expected to be worth US$150.3 billion by 2014, out of which the Symbian and Blackberry OS will account for nearly 32.2% and 18.9% of the total revenues respectively. The global market is expected to record a CAGR of 22.1% from 2009 to 2014.

source: iDigital Times