By Isagani de la Paz
LENOVO Corp. rolled out two gadgets as smartphone shipment are forecast to reach 1.53 billion units this year according to the International Data Corp. (IDC).
Lenovo last week rolled out its K6 Note and Lenovo A6600 Plus coming off the smartphone market’s lowest year-over-year growth of 2.5 percent in 2016 based on IDC data.
A new forecast from IDC’s monitoring data “shows worldwide smartphone shipments rebounding in 2017 and beyond”.
“While growth is expected to remain in the low single digits, IDC predicts shipment volumes to grow 4.2 percent in 2017 and 4.4 percent in 2018 with a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 3.8 percent over the 2016 to 2021 forecast,” IDC said, adding it forecasts shipments to grow to 1.77 billion in 2021.
“From a platform perspective, IDC doesn’t expect much change throughout the forecast with Android accounting for roughly 85 percent of smartphone shipments and [iOs] making up the rest,” IDC added.
Quoting Research Manager Anthony Scarsella, IDC said phone tablets or “phablets” displayed 49- percent year-over-year growth, “despite the moderate 2.5-percent growth in 2016 as consumers continue to flock to big-screened devices in both emerging and developed markets.”
IDC added it expects total phablet shipments worldwide to reach just under 680 million units by 2021, resulting in a CAGR of 9.2 percent for 2016 to 2021.
In comparison, regular smartphones will grow at a rate of just 1.1 percent during the same period, “proving, perhaps, that bigger may be better, or at least more popular when it comes to smartphones.”