Introduction

Trends refer to the flow of preferences and choice for a certain thing or styles or use (Kotler and Keller, 2006). In the recent global mobile phone industry, there have been numerous changes and development. But the most significant trends in the smartphone sector are identified as a high rate of using smartphones, concentrating the global mobile phone market share to a few companies etc. The current trends in the mobile phone sectors are analysed below:

What are the recent trends in the smartphone sector?

Wider use of smartphones: an important trend in the smartphone sector

Now there has been a strong trend of using smartphones (Lunden, 2015). In the past, people would use simple and general phone, but not people are very much interested to purchase a smartphones. The reason for this smartphone is that there are most additional features in the smartphones and thus people want to avail that. This extensive use of smartphones has encouraged the mobile phone companies to produce more and better smartphones.

Competition among a few companies: another potential trend in the smartphone sector

Another significant trend in the mobile phone industry is the concentration of the global mobile phone market share among a very few ones. In the global smartphone industry, Gartner Inc. has said that Apple’s iPhone is the leader because this company has a market share of 20% and this rate in tremendously increasing. On the other hand, Samsung has a market share of 19.9% and this company is leading the Android ecosystem with good profit margins (Gartner Inc., 2015).

On the other hand, Lenovo has a market share of 6.6% and Huawei with 5.7% (Gartner Inc., 2015). This is seen that 40% of the global mobile phone market share is concentrated among the 2 mobile phone companies: Apple and Samsung.

A significant trend in the smartphone sector is that the market is being concentrated among a very few competitors. Only 2 companies have the global market share of 40%, the two companies are apple and Samsung. On the other hand, other companies have very insignificant market share in the global mobile phone industry. Although the global market share of mobile phone is very much competitive, Apple is making significant profits because of its technological ecosystem and strategies. Domination of the global smartphone market by these two companies has made it possible for other companies to profitably compete in the industry.

Wider use of social media on smartphone

Another important trend in the mobile phone sector is the wider use of social media in the mobile phone. As people are more interested to be connected in the social media such as Facebook, twitter, mobile companies are developing mobile sets that can deliver best experiences in using the social media.

Production of smartphones in lower cost countries

As reported by The Economist, Mobile phone industry has become very much competitive and thus the companies are striving to reduce the cost of production. Therefore, there have been trends among the mobile phone producing companies to shift the mobile phone production in the low cost countries such as in China, India, Vietnam etc.

Competition to reduce the production cost has forced the companies to search the lower cost destinations (The Economist, 2014). In this case, China as got the preferences because it has the infrastructure and comparatively less cost, therefore, companies are moving to these countries. Therefore, significant development of these emerging economies has been possible.  On the other hand, companies have lost some sorts of control on these companies because these are operated in some lower cost countries.

Additional features are most important trends in the smartphone sector

Now the basic features of mobile phone such as talking and messaging are no more viable, rather newer features are adding to the mobile phones. People prefer those phones that offer additional but useful features. Therefore, phone companies are offering new and many features in the mobile phones.

Frequently new phones changing the habits of phone users

As companies are frequently coming with newer phones, there have been significant trend in changing the mobile phone and thus, when a new set comes in the market, people purchase the new one by selling the old ones. Therefore, a new market with old phones has developed (Versace, 2013).

It has already been discussed that there has been significant changes in the features and styles of the mobile phones that attracts more people to avail a new mobile phones (Versace, 2013). As a result, the old phones are sold out at the second hand market. Innovation in the mobile phone industry is important for the customers to use better technologies but this cost much to buy a new mobile phone every times a new phone comes to the market with newer features.

Mobile phone companies have strategies not to expose all the innovations in a single phone; rather they expose the features one by one to attract more customers and to make more profits (Rooney, 2013). But significant development would be possible if invented all the features can be unified in a single phone.

Bigger mobile phones

In the beginning of the last decade, the size of the mobile phone was relatively small, but now there has been competition among the mobile phone producers to enlarge the size of the mobile phones (Griffiths, 2014). Now people prefer larger mobile phones because using the social media is easy in larger mobile phones.