“The buzz around the budget iPhone has grown deafening, with new reports about the device coming out on a weekly basis,” Tero Kuittinen writes for BGR. “This will be a product launch with a unique impact because of two trends that define the current smartphone market.”
“First, the overall smartphone volume growth is projected to slow down from more than 50% in the fourth quarter of 2012 to about 36% in Q4 2013,” Kuittinen writes. “Second, the Q4 2012 growth rates of the three biggest Asian smartphone vendors have remained superheated, with Samsung (005930) at 76%, Huawei at 89% and Sony at 56%. What made this was possible was Apple’s slowdown to 29% growth during the past Christmas season and the notably weak year-on-year numbers from Nokia, ZTE and BlackBerry.”
Kuittinen writes, “If the budget iPhone really arrives this summer, it will drop smack in the middle of the tension created by slowing global smartphone volume growth and the extremely ambitious volume growth targets of the largest Asian vendors… [A] budget iPhone would completely reshape the Christmas season market share outlook, possibly spelling doom for a variety of mid-tier brands from HTC to LG.”
Read more in the full article here.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “Fred Mertz” for the heads up.]