Fitch Ratings expects Samsung Electronics to stay the leading smartphone vendor by market share for the next two years. The credit rating agency believes Samsung's ability to develop products with high customer appeal in a range of sizes and price points will secure it top smartphone slot, helped by the continued adoption of Google's Android platform.
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Samsung's Galaxy S III |
The agency--which rates Samsung at A+/Stable, the highest among Fitch's Asia-Pacific portfolio of rated technology companies--claims that the South Korean company's share of smartphone unit sales has risen to a leading 31 per cent from just 3 per cent two years ago. By Fitch's estimate, Samsung sold 96.7 million smartphones in 2011 to Apple's 91.3 million.
Of note, Apple's smartphone market share increased to 24 per cent from 16 per cent, while Nokia plummeted from 38 per cent to 8 per cent over the same period, according to Fitch.
However, while Samsung's wide portfolio of smartphones have enabled it to effective penetrate both developed and emerging markets, its No. 1 position might be overtaken in some quarters by Apple when the company releases its updated iPhone models.
Fitch also highlighted that Samsung has been quick to exploit the growing preference among second-time smartphone buyers for a handset that is still portable but offers a better user experience via a larger screen, and hence the larger display sizes for even its mainstream Galaxy models compared with the iPhone 4S.
Samsung took a record 10 million pre-orders for its latest Galaxy S III smartphone, which was only launched this month on a global basis.
For more:
- see this Reuters article
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