Apple drop out of top five APEJ Smartphone race

Underperforming Apple has suffered another major setback as it has dropped out of the top five of the Smartphone race in the APEJ (Asia Pacific Excluding Japan) region due to the strong performance of Chinese vendors, according to a report published by IDC.

The study suggested that the Chinese vendors are tightening their grip over the APEJ market owing to their considerably inexpensive handsets.

IDC predicated that the Smartphone shipments in the region will nearly double up by 2017 but the Californian manufacturer won’t have a significant share in that.

The analyst firm said that the Smartphone sales in APEJ in the second quarter of 2013 were dominated by Samsung that shipped 28 million units to secure 24% market share. Overall, 119 million units were shipped in the APEJ in Q2 2013. The Smartphones sales outnumbered featured phones for the first time in the period between April-June to grab 53% share of the overall mobile industry.

Apple’s fall in the APEJ region, where it single-handedly ruled for several years, did not appear as a big surprise as it has been consistently struggling against Samsung in almost all other big markets. A research firm, Strategy Analytics (SA), last month reported that the overall market share of the California-based company hit a three-year low during Q2 2013 as it recorded only 31.2 million shipments compared to Samsung’s 76 million Smartphone units.

In APEJ all leading Chinese players such as Coolpad, Lenovo, ZTE and Huawei are responsible for Apple’s downfall, IDC said.

IDC in its study reported that the people in APEJ are gradually moving towards the homegrown brands as they accounted for 38% of Q2 2013 volumes, up from 20% in the second quarter of 2012, and 7% in the same period of 2011. The examples of these rising brands IDC believes are i-Mobile and GNET (Thailand), Lava and Micromax (India), K-Touch and Xiaomi (China), Q-Smart (Vietnam), i-Mobile and GNET (Thailand) and  S-CSL (Malaysia).

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