![]() In total, brands including Asus, Acer, Huawei (mostly Androids), Telstra and Vodafone own brand phones rose to 8.5% of all smartphone sales in April 2014, compared to just 2% 12 months prior.
Most of the growth for these lesser well known phones falls within the prepay sector, which is doing very well at the moment, on the back of cheaper options from Aldi Mobile and Amaysim, Tamsin Timpson, Strategic Director, Worldpanel ComTech APAC told CN.
Incidentally, the three months to April 2014, Google Android share of the smartphone market fell 3%. Despite Android’s fall, Samsung was still the big winner, as its new flagship Galaxy S5 was released on April 11. However, year on year, sales fell 5% to 38% of all phones sold in Australia.
Samsung’s major growth was due to sales of the older Galaxy S3 and S4 spiking, with telcos and retailers offering attractive deals to clear out older stock to make way for the new Galaxy 5.
Apple iPhone now accounts for one in three smartphone sold in OZ (+2%), while smartphones running Windows Phone including Nokia also climbed to 7% of all sales by the end of last month.
Android
In terms of other well known Androids, LG marketshare halved to 2.3% in the year to April 2014, while Motorola, now owned by Lenovo also fell, as did HTC, despite the release of new One M8.
However, Sony is doing really well in the Android space, with Xperia Z proving a hit among consumers. The brand now accounts for 7% of all smartphone sales.
Although Chinese brands are eating into European markets, the only one with a major presence here is Huawei.
Huawei has increased share in the prepaid market, and its total market share has doubled to 3.1%.
Although it has good spec Android-operated smartphones at very affordable prices, ” it still has a long way to go ” to catch up with the big guns like Apple and Samsung due to a lack of awareness about the brand locally, says Timpson.
The company saw the number of smartphones it sold jump 123% in the big five European markets including UK, and Germany over the past year.
Another Chinese big gun, ZTE launched its first branded smartphone here last week for $299.
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