The global mobile phone industry reached 433 million units phones shipments in Q1 2014, a growth of 4.4% over Q1 2013. Although shipments decreased in most of the regions, it was balanced by the growth in Latin America and China. Asia accounted for the half of the total shipments in the quarter followed by Europe. In terms of countries, the shipment volume was driven by China, accounted for one-fourth of the total shipment volume.
Smartphones remained the key segment with 68% of the share of the total handset shipments. This segment had a growth of 30% (y-o-y) reaching 294 million shipments in Q1 2014. Smartphones grew across all major geographies with emerging markets became the key contributors to drive the demand. Again smartphone market was driven by Asian countries followed by Europe.
Meanwhile, feature phone demand continued to slide globally. Asian countries such as India, South East Asia remain the key feature phone markets, with Asia alone accounting for more than half of the global feature phone shipments. Feature phones in Q1 2014 represent a mere 32.1% of total handset shipments compared to 72% in Q1 2011.
The overall growth continued to saturate in developed markets whereas emerging markets continued to register healthy growth with growing demand for smartphones.
