"The clear synergy between smartphones and tablets, with their shared touchscreen features and common application environments, make them by far the hottest segments of the mobile broadband device market," said Richard Webb, Infonetics Research directing analyst for microwave and small cells.
Just as Apple iPhone users are more likely to buy an iPad as their tablet, so too are Android users more likely to buy Android-based tablets.
It is increasingly important for vendors to have a strong portfolio in both market segments to leverage this synergy.
Highlights from Infonetics latest market study include:
- A total of $31.4 billion was spent on smartphones in 2Q11, down 1.4 percent from the previous quarter despite unit shipments being up about 2 percenet, indicating unit-price erosion impeded revenue growth.
- Infonetics expects global smartphone revenue to grow 31 percent in 2011 over 2010, to $117 billion.
- Apple's stronger volumes and higher ARPU helped increase its global smartphone revenue share every quarter thus far in 2011, now at 36 percent of the smartphone market in 2Q11.
- HTC and Samsung leapfrogged into 2nd and 3rd place, respectively, in the global smartphone market in 2Q11, ahead of RIM and Nokia.
- Combined across all vendors, Android continues to be the number one smartphone operating system (OS) in the world, used in nearly half of all smartphones shipped worldwide.
- The mobile device OS ecosystem is still one of the most influential drivers of the mobile broadband marketplace.
