"By the third quarter of 2011, we estimate there were 708 million smartphones in use worldwide. After a further year of soaring demand, the number of smartphones in use worldwide reached 1.038 billion units during the third quarter of 2012," Scott Bicheno, a senior analyst at Strategy Analytics, said in a statement.
The researcher also points out that there's still a huge scope for the growth of the smartphones with smartphone penetration relatively low in emerging markets such as China, India and Africa.
Still, "smartphone penetration is still relatively low," said Neil Mawston, Strategy Analytics' executive director. "Most of the world does not yet own a smartphone and there remains huge scope for future growth, particularly in emerging markets such as China, India and Africa."
The researcher further says Nokia had launched the world's first smartphone in 1996, and dominated the market for over a decade. But the dynamics changed by 2007 when iPhone was launched, and the Android platform saw a rapid growth worldwide.
Bloomberg in its report says the growth of the smartphone market, estimated worth $219 billion last year, helped Apple and Samsung increase their earnings as they took over the likes of Espoo and Nokia. Last month, Apple sold more than 5 millon units of the iPhone 5, breaking a record set by its predecessor iPhone 4S.
According to Strategy Analytics, the number of mobiles in usage is expected to go past 10 billion by 2016.
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