SmartPhones Tablets

Blackberry 10 Traction to Drive RIM’s Next Leg

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The RIM Management provided several incremental updates following the February / March launch and subsequent global rollout of BB10, including 1mn units of BB10 sell-in in the first month of availability. BB10 has received technical acceptance at 223 carriers and has launched on 60 carriers across 40 countries, with 30 more countries forthcoming. 55% of … Read more

Which Brands Will Benefit from 3G SmartPhone Upgrade Cycle ?

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It is apparent that local smartphone brands gained share from foreign brands in 2012. Although Samsung remained the market share leader throughout the year, local brands, especially Lenovo, made significant progress. At the end of 2012, local brands’ combined market share was 61%, and we expect this to edge up to 66% in 2013, as brand names outgrow whitebox players.

As Operators derive higher profits from local brand smartphones than from Apple / Samsung smartphones local brands are likely to gain more subsidy share, even though overall operators’ subsidies could remain flat. Further, a successful flagship model also helps promote brand image, thus increasing sales volume across the product line. Notably, all flagship models (quad-core, 4”+ touch display, 8MP, etc.) from local brands are priced at below USD 600.

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MarketShare of SmartPhone Mobile Handsets in China

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The China smartphone market is price driven (sub-Rmb1000 or US$150); consensus believes aggressive pricing will continue in 2013. We think the market will remain fragmented, but selective brands in China could benefit in 2013 through enlarged scale. We think share gains at Lenovo and ZTE could help the companies defend margins at the operating level … Read more

Nokia Lumia Windows Phone too Late to Take on the Google Android Challenge

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Nokia Lumia Launch IndiaNokia India has launched two smartphones to its Lumia series with the Lumia 720 targeted at the mid-range segment and the Lumia 520 targeted at the entry-level market. Nokia’s CEO, Stephen Elop, the launch of such smartphones now firmly puts Nokia and Microsoft’s Windows Phone 8 presence across all smartphone price points, starting from the Lumia 520 at the entry level to the Lumia 920 at the highest end, thus making a better mobile experience more broadly available.

The Lumia 720’s main highlighted attraction is the camera which has an aperture of f/1.9 on a Carl Zeiss lens, bigger than all the smartphones in its price-range and also some of the high-end

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ZTE Shifts Focus to Operators for Increasing Sales

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ZTE sold 65mn handsets in 2012 and became the 4th largest OEM in the world, according to IDC. 70% of the handset revenue came from smartphone. Looking into 2013, we expect ZTE to ship 40mn smartphone, up 42% YoY. ZTE ships ~40% of its smartphone in domestic market and ~60% in overseas. We expect ZTE to continue focusing on operator channel in 2013 and believe management should be cautious about moving towards open channel, due to high marketing expense. In China, growing volume in TD models would also benefit ZTE, who has a competitive edge against peers in TD. TD models deliver higher margin for ZTE thanks to less competition thus far.

ZTE management acknowledged that there’s still a gap between ZTE

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Growth in Mobile Payemnts in China

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According to iResearch, the growth of mobile payments in China is likely to be driven by, The country’s expanding mobile internet economy. iResearch revealed that the scale of China’s mobile internet economy reached RMB97.6b as of 2012, up 148% YoY, much higher than the 46% YoY growth of the desktop-based internet economy during the same … Read more

Smartphone penetration – China higher than US!

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U.S. market research firm Nielsen recently released a report summarizing mobile consumption trends across major countries. In terms of smartphone penetration, the countries with relatively high smartphone penetration included South Korea (67%), China (66%), Australia (65%), Italy (62%) and the U.K. (61%) and the U.S. (53%). We note that China according to this report boasts … Read more

iPhone Users Play More Games than Android ?

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International media and marketing research firm Arbitron analyzed the behavior of 12,000 US Android, iPhone and BlackBerry users, discovering that iPhone users were 10 percentage points more likely than Android users to be gamers. Specifically, the study found that roughly 86% of iPhone users played games vs. 76% of Android users. iPhone users who played … Read more