Nokia 9000 communicator, to this day, exists as the oldest version of a smartphone ever created. Revolutionary at the time in 1996, when it was released, it featured a 1.2 KB/s GSM Modem that could connect to the web and surf as well as access email. It was around nine years since its inception that the age of smartphones was at its dawn. It took a miracle from the wonder kid Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak to kickstart the smartphone industry with their company Apple Inc. Apple released the revolutionary and one of its kind iPhones in the summer of 2007 for the elite of silicon valley at the whopping price of $500 for its 4GB version.
After 14 long years of global dominance by the smartphone industry launching hundreds of mobile phones over the course. With companies initially being Apple and Samsung, the industry has grown to include Huawei, Mi, One Plus, and many others. Although this time period might not seem much, the rise, as well as the fall, of Blackberry happened during this time and so was the case with many companies.
However, this has caused the market to be saturated heavily to the point that sales shipments have also been affected. It has seen a downfall since its peak in 2016 where around 1473 million devices were shipped. Even though there has been some improvement over the last quarter in 2020 and the first quarter of 2021, the shipment only topped around 1300 million devices and that too was lower than what was shipped in 2013.
There are some experts that believe the downfall to be imminent and inevitable unless ground breaking innovation is made that is to be widely accessible all across the globe as a necessity. However, there is a group of researchers and market experts at IDC that not only defy any inevitability of the downfall but project that the sales are set for an increase over the few years breaking the record established in 2016.
The reason for IDC’s hope is backed by the newly developed 5G technology and it can be seen that several of the giants have started to adopt this new internet technology in their mobile phones. Almost every flagship phone released in 2021 is expected to have 5G connectivity and some that are released are equipped with 5G.
IDC’s figures state that the 2016 peak would be defeated by a margin of 127 million devices at least. It is expected that by 2025, the number of mobile devices shipped might rise up and beyond the 1500 million devices mark.
Read next: More Than Half a Dozen Mobile Games Earn Over $100 Million a Month
After 14 long years of global dominance by the smartphone industry launching hundreds of mobile phones over the course. With companies initially being Apple and Samsung, the industry has grown to include Huawei, Mi, One Plus, and many others. Although this time period might not seem much, the rise, as well as the fall, of Blackberry happened during this time and so was the case with many companies.
However, this has caused the market to be saturated heavily to the point that sales shipments have also been affected. It has seen a downfall since its peak in 2016 where around 1473 million devices were shipped. Even though there has been some improvement over the last quarter in 2020 and the first quarter of 2021, the shipment only topped around 1300 million devices and that too was lower than what was shipped in 2013.
There are some experts that believe the downfall to be imminent and inevitable unless ground breaking innovation is made that is to be widely accessible all across the globe as a necessity. However, there is a group of researchers and market experts at IDC that not only defy any inevitability of the downfall but project that the sales are set for an increase over the few years breaking the record established in 2016.
The reason for IDC’s hope is backed by the newly developed 5G technology and it can be seen that several of the giants have started to adopt this new internet technology in their mobile phones. Almost every flagship phone released in 2021 is expected to have 5G connectivity and some that are released are equipped with 5G.
IDC’s figures state that the 2016 peak would be defeated by a margin of 127 million devices at least. It is expected that by 2025, the number of mobile devices shipped might rise up and beyond the 1500 million devices mark.
Chart via Statista.
Read next: More Than Half a Dozen Mobile Games Earn Over $100 Million a Month
