The global mobile phone industry reached 527 million units phones shipments in Q4 2014, a growth of 12% over Q4 2013. Shipments increased in all the regions with Asia accounting for the slightly over half of the total shipments in the quarter followed by Europe. In terms of countries, the shipment volume was driven by China and India, accounting for almost 36% of the total shipment volume. However India shipments showed a decline on account of slump in sales post festive season.
Smartphone remained the key segment with 72.5% of the share of the total handset shipments. This segment had a growth of 26% (y-o-y) reaching 382 million shipments in Q4 2014. Smartphones grew across all geographies the growth will be driven by driven by South East Asian countries like India, Indonesia, and Thailand while China smartphone market touches level of saturation in 2015.
Meanwhile, feature phones demand declined by 14% (y-o-y). Asian countries such as India, South East Asia still remain the key feature phone markets, with Asia alone accounting for more than half of the global feature phone shipments. India was the largest feature phone market in the world reaching 42 million and contributing to 29% of the global feature phone shipments and almost 50% of Asia’s feature phone volumes. Feature phones in Q4 2014 represent a mere 27.5% of total handset shipments compared to 72% in Q1 2011.
As predicted by us in our earlier analysis the smartphone industry reached a record US$ 325 billion mark during CY 2014 in wholesale shipment revenues for the first time, thanks to rising adoption of smartphones developing countries.
In terms of Technology, LTE was the fastest growing segment and became the leading cellular-interface technology powering the mobile phones during the Q4 2014, as the total LTE phone shipments in the quarter surpassed the total 3G (e.g.WCDMA/HSPA/HSPA+) shipments for the first time ever…
