Smartphones to account for 54 percent of Asia-Pacific device sales by 2015

MALAYSIA: Growth in the Asia-Pacific smartphone market is likely to skyrocket in the coming years and by 2015, Frost & Sullivan forecasts that 54 percent of all devices sold in the region will be smartphones, up from only 5 percent in 2009.

Smartphone sales in Asia-Pacific are rapidly increasing in all markets, as developed markets like Japan and South Korea are switching from feature phones to smartphones, while operators in emerging markets are pushing smartphones to entice users to upgrade from 2G to 3G service.

Mobile social networking has also proven to be a big driver of smartphone adoption in all Asian countries.

“Smartphones are critical to every operator’s mobile broadband business case, as a smartphone user’s ARPU (average revenue per user) typically increased by 25 to 100 percent after adoption depending on the market,” says Frost & Sullivan industry manager Marc Einstein.

“The Asia-Pacific market is particularly interesting for smartphones as there has been significant uptake in emerging markets like China, India and Indonesia, even among prepaid users,” he adds.

New analysis from Frost & Sullivan, 2010 Asia-Pacific Mobile Device & Smartphone Outlook, finds that the incremental data usage from smartphones will generate over $38 billion for operators in the Asia-Pacific region (18 Asia-Pac countries, including Japan), up from just over $1.3 billion in 2009.

Despite the massive growth in smartphone sales, there are still many factors impeding sale of the device in many markets. According to Einstein: “80 percent of Asian mobile users use prepaid cards, and in fact in many markets are as high as 97 percent, making smartphone subsidies impossible for most users. Furthermore, there is a lack of public Wi-Fi, particularly in emerging markets which has been a smartphone saviour in the USA and other developed markets.”

Smartphone sales are also particularly important for vendors as the total market for device sales is stagnant in most markets.

“Only the most developing markets are seeing double-digit increases in device sales, and with flat or negative growth in many markets, smartphone sales are filling in this gap,” Einstein adds.

He estimates 477 million units of smartphones will be sold in Asia-Pacific in 2015.