Smartphone projected to tot up 1bn sales in 2013
Accountants Deloitte are projecting that smartphone sales will smash through the 1bn sales barrier this year as the pocket phenomenon continues its rise to global ubiquity.
Deloitte are already tipping 2013 to be the year smartphones go mass market with the number of phones sporting a touch screen or keyboard to 2bn before the year is out.
Sales are being driven by continued falls in the retail value of devices from the likes of HTC and Nokia, putting such gadgets within the reach of hundreds of millions of new consumers.
Already some 500m smartphones have been flogged for $100 or less with devices retailing at just $50 expected to emerge soon.
The boom in smartphone adoption won’t necessarily correlate to more data consumption with as many as one in five owners never bothering to connect to the web.
Paul Lee, Deloitte telecoms head of research said: “They are like feature phones in a smartphone casing. Smartphone penetration goes up but data plan penetration doesn't go up as quickly. Not every mobile will be used in the same way."