As you would expect, emerging economies are driving most of the smartphone growth, due in large part to introduction of 3G and 4G networks. In these markets, entry-level smartphones priced below $200 are gaining momentum. In fact, this sector comprises 55% of shipments in China, the world’s largest smartphone market.

At the high end of the market, LTE-enabled smartphones will reach 23% market share in 2013, prompting demand for large screen displays. In that sense, shipments of full HD AMOLED and LTPS LCD panels are forecast to increase significantly, from 1.7 million units in 2012 to 113 million units in 2013.

Screen sizes are also changing with the market. In 2013, 57% of smartphone displays will range between 4-5 inches, while screens larger than 5 inches will grow to 16% of the market…

It’ll be interesting to see how things change next year, especially given how T-Mobile just recently changed its whole strategy becoming the “UNcarrier.”

Are you satisfied with your wireless provider?

[via bgr]

Her motivation: “My cellphone battery always dies.”

From NBC:

Waiting hours for a cellphone to charge may become a thing of the past, thanks to an 18-year-old high-school student’s invention. She won a $50,000 prize Friday at an international science fair for creating an energy storage device that can be fully juiced in 20 to 30 seconds. The fast-charging device is a so-called supercapacitor, a gizmo that can pack a lot of energy into a tiny space, charges quickly and holds its charge for a long time. What’s more, it can last for 10,000 charge-recharge cycles, compared with 1,000 cycles for conventional rechargeable batteries, according to Eesha Khare of Saratoga, Calif.

Khare won the Young Scientist Prize along with 17-year-old Henry Lin, whose computer model simulates thousands of galaxies. The big winner was Romanian 19-year-old, Ionut Alexandru Budisteanu who won the $75,000 Gordan E. Moore prize for his low-cost solution to driverless cars. The Intel International Science and Engineering Fair is an annual event that was held in Phoenix, Arizona this year.

So far, Eesha Khare’s supercapacitor has only been used to power an LED. But the implications are clear. Her device is flexible and scalable which means it could be used for anything that relies on a  battery, even electric cars! I’m sure this young scientist has a bright future ahead of her and we’ll be hearing more about her in the years to come.

Congrats, Eesha, and all the winners!

[Via: NBC]

According to Juniper Research, there will be more than 2 billion mobile TV and video viewers by 2017.

YouTube is preparing to make some money out of this trend (with its paid YouTube Channels) with Juniper’s report author Siân Rowlands predicting “incredible repercussions” throughout the mobile space given YouTube comes preinstalled on a large number of devices and Android’s billing options.

However, it’s unclear whether YouTube will be successful with this new monetization model. In 2011, similar paid channels were launched, but with very limited success…

Additional details about the report are available from Juniper’s website.

[Image from modmyi]

Multi-device Shared Plans are relatively novel and at the moment only about 5% of mobile subscribers have the option to subscribe to them. Of the addressable market, 15% can choose from All You Can Eat Data plans, whereas 66% only have recourse to the traditional Tiered Usage Pricing model.

According to ABI’s VP for Forecasting Jake Saunders, things need to change as mobile operators should be prepared to adopt novel pricing models in order to boost subscriber adoption and therefore incremental revenue. In that sense he suggests pricing plan diversification to serve the different needs of customers. Among the good examples, ABI points to T-Mobile Germany, Telecom Italia and Reliance of India, with Vodafone Group planning to launch such plan by the end of this year.

The conclusion is that Multi-device Shared Plans can be used as a way to stimulate the 4G LTE market, helping grow ARPU along the way.

According to latest figures from the research firm Raymond James, BlackBerry is steadily gaining its Canadian market share back. From its sunk market share of 6%, it managed to grow to 13.5% of the Canadian market.

As you would expect, Apple and Samsung are ruling the market, accounting for 40.1% (down from 44% in Q4 2012) and 31% (also down from 35% in Q2 2012), respectively.

Many Canadian organizations like Canadian Tire, BMO and Torys LLP have outwardly declared support for the BlackBerry 10 platform and are procuring the Z10 and Q10 smartphones for their employees.

While we still don’t have the sales numbers, we do know that carriers have got a “very positive response” to the new BlackBerry devices with Q10 selling especially well, according to the company’s CEO…

[Via: MobileSyrup]

Neil Shah, Senior Analyst at Strategy Analytics, goes on to add that the Android platform accounted for 43% share of the entire smartphone industry’s operating profits that have reached $12.5 billion worldwide in Q1.

Another Strategy Analytics’ Senior Analyst, Woody Oh, argues that Samsung has its efficient supply chain, sleek products and crisp marketing to thank for its current position.

With just 3% of the market, LG is the second largest Android smartphone maker. It delivered a small profit during the quarter, as it currently lacks the volume scale needed to match “Samsung’s outsized profits.”

Finally, the research firm’s Executive Director Neil Mawston concludes that Samsung is not only the undisputed king of the global Android smartphone industry, but that it also likely generates more revenue and profit from the Android platform than Google does. In that sense, it may use this position to influence the future direction of the Android ecosystem…

In addition, 74% of tablet owners would love to be able to pick and choose commercials they are shown.

As for generational video viewing habits, Millennials (born 1977-1994) tablet owners spent 23% of their total video-watching time — which is the time spent watching video on any device in a 7-day period — watching video on a tablet. This compares to 16% for GenXers (1965-1976), 11% for Baby Boomers (1946-1964) and 6% for pre-Boomers…

Of all smart devices, tablets were growing at a fastest pace, with some 41.9 million units shipped for 106% growth compared with the same period the year before.

Smartphone shipments numbered around 216 million units for the quarter, a year-on-year growth of 48%.

On the other hand, we have notebook shipments which totaled 50.5 million units, representing (another) quarterly contraction of 13%. The biggest decline was in Western Europe, where shipments fell by 25% on an annual basis.

When it comes to platforms, Android continues to dominate, accounting for 59.5% of all smart mobile devices shipped. In the tablet space, however, Apple is still market leader with 46.4% of the market, but it did lose ground to Android-based rivals for the third consecutive quarter.

Android-based handsets accounted for 75.6% of total smartphone shipments during the quarter, with Samsung dominating once again, growing its year-on-year volume by 64.3%. In contrast, Apple saw modest annual growth of 6.7% in its smartphone shipments, though it did manage to ship over 37 million iPhones. Huawei, LG and ZTE complete the top-five smartphone vendors, but each have less than 5% market share…

When we look at the second half of 2013, smartphone owners were most likely to be interested in devices with a screen size between 4.2-inches and 4.7-inches. That’s an increase in the preferred smartphone screen size from a 4.3-inch in the same period of 2011.

According to Strategy Analytics, smartphone intenders show greater interest in slightly smaller devices than existing smartphone owners. Moreover, males preferred smartphones with larger screens than females, while current brand of smartphone also impacts future screen size preferences.

Nearly all respondents showed a preference for their next phone to have a larger screen size than their existing handset.

Paul Brown, a Director in the Strategy Analytics User Experience Practice, argues that the intention of many manufacturers to drive screen size up has been very clear over recent months, opening-up the market for phablets.

However, Strategy Analytics’ Vice-President for the User Experience Practice Kevin Nolan thinks that as screen size increases, the way in which consumers interact with the device also needs to be considered. “Larger devices are harder to interact with one-handed, and so it is important for user-interfaces, and especially on-screen key placements, to be designed to allow for easy interaction,” he added.

What about you – what’s your perfect screen size?

All these connections are spread across 163 networks in 70 countries, and the forecast is that there will be more than 400 live networks across 120 countries by December 2017.

Industry growth has been primarily driven by operators in Australia, Canada, Japan, South Korea and the US — which are the five countries that represent 90% of the global LTE connections market.

The US is especially interesting market as there are some operators which have started turning the page over the 2G chapter, according to Joss Gillet, senior analyst at Wireless Intelligence.

He went on to predict the industry surpassing 900 million LTE connections globally by December 2017, with the 1 billion milestone achieved in the first half of 2018.

[Via: MobileWorldLive]