Feature phones? No.
Smartphones? Yes, says Western Europe, where
smartie shipments have overpowered those of feature phones with a
little help from the Android Operating System.
Let's talk stats: IDC reported in Q2 feature phone shipments
crawled back by 29 per cent to 20.4m while smartphones managed to
squeeze in 48 per cent more, reaching 21.8m.
In fact, the analyst firm has found that phone manufacturers are
slowly stepping away from making feature phones in favour of
smartphones.
IDC was quoted as saying:
"Feature phones are becoming a niche segment driven by the
very-low-end devices targeted at users who only need a device for
voice and texts."
It has been calculated that a shiny third of all shipments (both
feature and smart) across the market came from
Samsung, followed closely by
Nokia with 21 per cent as well as
Apple at 11 per cent.
However, Samsung is also the star of a slightly different show
as it has also grabbed first place in terms of shipments of
smarties alone, scoring 22 per cent, which is just a single
percentage more than Apple, with HTC fast on their
footsteps with 14 per cent.
Francisco Jeronimo, IDC's European mobile
devices research manager, reportedly said:
"Android-powered handsets from the likes of Samsung, HTC,
and Sony Ericsson have been able to drive strong volumes and to
grab the biggest slice of share from the declining Symbian as Nokia
moves to Windows Phones."