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News Article

Apple & Samsung Engulf Standalone Semiconductor Processors

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The good news is that the smartphone market grew by a decent 44.4% year over year in the last quarter, according to market research company Forward Concepts.

On the down side, the firm's annual market research report, "Cellular Handset & Tablet Chip Markets '12," says that smartphone Q1 2012 shipments also declined to only 6.9% over the previous quarter.

Global sales of mobile phones (budget, midrange, feature and smartphones) to end users reached 379 million units in the first quarter of 2012, a 9% decline from the first quarter of 2011.

High smartphone demand continued to drive mobile device market growth, reaching 139 million units in the first quarter of 2012, a hefty 37% of the global cellphone market.

And Apple and Samsung, raised their combined share in the smartphone market to 45.7%, up from 30% in the first quarter of 2011, widening their lead over Nokia , which saw its smartphone market share drop to a mere 8.6%.

In the first quarter of 2012, Apple iPADs achieved a 59.3% share of the media tablet market, including the sub-$199 Amazon Kindle and Barnes & Noble Nook.

Also, Apple's multimode LTE "iPAD3" has enabled the company to offer the iPAD2 at lower prices, causing a decline in Android tablet shipments.

Ereader manufacturers shipped only 1.4 million units in the first quarter of 2012, down from 4.2 million units shipped in the final quarter of 2011.


According to the principal author of the report, Carter L. Horney, "Global sales of mobile devices declined in Q1 more than expected due to a slowdown in demand from the emerging regions. All vendors were impacted at different levels; however, Chinese white-box vendors suffered the most with bloated inventories."


Among the top 10 cellphone vendors, Nokia, Samsung and Apple topped 2011 unit shipments while Chinese suppliers Huawei, ZTE and TCL also moved into the top ten


Not surprisingly, that in terms of revenue, Apple led over Samsung and Nokia in the smartphone market. But Samsung beat Nokia in overall cellphone unit shipments in Q1/2012, with Apple taking 3rd place.

 

Although Baseband chips of several types constitute the largest non-memory cellphone chip market at $15.9 billion for 2011, there are other multi-billion-dollar cellphone chip markets. These include $5.5 billion for power management units, $3.7 billion for RF transceivers, $3.6 billion for RF power amplifiers, $2.9 billion for image sensors, $2.8 billion for standalone application processors, and $2.7 billion for touch-screen controllers.


 


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