Our Wireless Device Strategies (WDS) team is proud to attend Huawei's 10th Global Analyst Summit between Tuesday 23rd to Thursday 25th April, 2013. Around 500 analysts and journalists are attending the event at a hotel in Shenzhen, China, near Hong Kong. Just 20 people attended the first Summit a decade ago.

Huawei has been outlining its strategy for mobile devices, enterprises and networks in 2013 / 2014. These are three of our top findings from Day One (Tuesday):

1. Brand is king for Huawei. The Make It Possible (MIP) campaign, which aims to make the brand more emotive, is being ramped up across 30+ countries (e.g. UK);

2. Huawei Ascend W1, the vendor's first WP8 smartphone, was demoed. Its pricing is competitive, at circa US$120 wholesale worldwide in H1 2013. Usability is typical of a mid-range device -- good, but not great (e.g. mixed touchscreen responsiveness);

3. NFC will play an important role in Huawei's smartphone and tablet strategy for the next two years.

More analysis from Day Two to follow on Wednesday.

According to our Wireless Device Strategies (WDS) service, several hundred million mobile handsets will flow through "closed" operator channels worldwide during 2014 (e.g. Telefonica). Some regions are dominated by operator-led channels, while others are dominated by retailer channels (e.g. Africa). Notably, China is seeing significant changes in distribution flows at the moment. This published report, available to clients, forecasts global handset distribution flows for 6 major regions and 3 key countries from 2007 to 2017, including North America, Western Europe, Latin America, China and India. The forecasts can be used by handset vendors, vehicle makers, apps developers and others to identify the main regional channels where mobile phones are being sold, and whether operators or retailers are winning the distribution wars.

According to our Wireless Device Strategies (WDS) service, the global installed base of all mobile phones will grow by +6% in 2014. Asia Pacific is the region with the largest installed base by some margin, while Western Europe has the highest population penetration. Countries with huge installed bases include China, United States, UK, Nigeria, India, Brazil and Russia. This extensive published report, available to clients, forecasts the worldwide mobile phone installed base by 6 major regions and 88 countries from 2002 to 2017. It forecasts handset population penetration and handset household penetration. The report is a valuable tool for content developers, car makers, component vendors, operators and other stakeholders to measure the world's installed base of mobile phones by size, growth and penetration.

According to our Wireless Device Strategies (WDS) service, TD-SCDMA phone sales will grow a healthy +38% in China in 2013. The Chinese 3G cellphone market is growing several times faster than the global average. Attractive pricing of devices and helpful operator subsidies are pushing the market higher. This is giving solid growth opportunities to companies involved in the TD-SCDMA industry, such as ZTE, Huawei, Coolpad, Lenovo, and Spreadtrum. However, TD-LTE networks will soon arrive, and the shelf-life of TD-SCDMA is thus limited. This published report, available to clients, forecasts TD-SCDMA handset sales for 88 countries worldwide from 2008 to 2017, including China.

Strategy Analytics' global devices team was on the show floor at MWC 2013, the arguably most influential trade show in the mobile industry, for five days, meeting dozens of firms and executives. What new analysis did we make as a result of our meetings? What are the hot topics and disruptive products that MWC visitors were asking about? What will be major trends for smartphones and operating systems in the second half of 2013? We conducted a webinar on Mar 6 to present a lot of interesting and noticeable topics that we gathered during MWC 2013. All Strategy Analytics' clients are invited to see the replay here.

Clients of Strategy Analytics are invited to join a post-Mobile World Congress (MWC) webinar.

Please join us for the online presentation for 45 minutes at 300pm UK-time on Wednesday 6th March, 2013.

The registration form for the Webinar is located here.

We look forward to presenting our analysis and findings from MWC, the world's largest mobile industry event.

Clients of Strategy Analytics are invited to join a post-Mobile World Congress (MWC) webinar.

Please join us for the online presentation for 45 minutes at 300pm UK-time on Wednesday 6th March, 2013.

The registration form for the Webinar is located here.

We look forward to presenting our analysis and findings from MWC, the world's largest mobile industry event.

Global mobile phone shipments overall remained flat annually in Q4 2012. However, the quarter witnessed phenomenal +1100% annual growth for LTE handset volumes, led by Apple and Samsung in developed markets. Meanwhile, 3G handset shipments slowed due to the spike in 4G demand. In this published report, available to clients of our Wireless Device Strategies (WDS) service, we provide quarterly handset shipments by protocol for the top-30 global vendors, for 9 cellular access technologies, from 2001 to 2012. This hugely detailed report is valuable for handset vendors, component makers, operators, IPR holders and other stakeholders who want to track the size of 2G, 3G and 4G mobile phone markets.

According to the latest research from our Wireless Device Strategies (WDS) service, global mobile phone shipments grew a modest 2 percent annually to reach 1.6 billion units in 2012. Samsung was the star performer, accounting for 1 in 4 of all mobile phones shipped worldwide last year.

Ongoing macroeconomic challenges in mature markets like North America and Western Europe, tighter operator upgrade policies, and shifting consumer tastes were among the key reasons why global mobile phone shipments grew just 2 percent annually to reach 1.6 billion units in 2012. Fuelled by robust demand for its popular Galaxy models, Samsung was the star performer, shipping a record 396.5 million mobile phones worldwide and capturing 25 percent marketshare to solidify its first-place lead. However, Samsung’s total volumes for the year fell just short of the 400-million threshold.

Nokia’s global mobile phone shipments fell 20 percent from 417.1 million units in 2011 to 335.6 million in 2012. Nokia faced tough competition from Samsung in developing markets like China, while Apple and others ramped up the pressure in developed regions such as Western Europe. Nokia’s dual-SIM feature phones, Asha touchphones and Lumia handsets have been performing well, but this was not enough to offset a slump in demand for the company’s aging Symbian smartphone platform last year.

Apple shipped a record 135.8 million mobile phones worldwide in 2012. Apple delivered 46 percent annual growth last year, which was bolstered by solid demand in North America and Asia. Apple’s launch of the iPhone 5 in Q4 2012 was a success as volumes ramped up in dozens of countries worldwide, but negative media coverage of the model’s new integrated maps service and supply chain challenges cast a slight shadow over the launch.

ZTE captured 5 percent share of the global mobile phone market in 2012, as its shipments fell minus 8 percent from 2011, partly because of heightened competition in core markets like China and Western Europe from rivals such as Coolpad and Samsung.

The summary of the report is available to view here.

Exhibit 1: Global Mobile Phone Vendor Shipments and Market Share in Q4 2012 [1]

1 Numbers are rounded. The Total in the data-table does not include grey phone shipments.

Global handset sales will reach 1.6 billion units in 2012, and consumers will have a wide variety of handset types available for purchase.

Bigger screen size complemented with powerful processors and high-speed 3G/4G and beyond network capabilities have made these superphones and tablets high demand devices for content consumption (iPhone) and slowly shifting towards creation (Galaxy Note).

Thus, postpaid or mature mobile phone users are upgrading to phablets, superphones, and smartphones, while prepaid consumers are upgrading to feature phones and smaller sized / mass-market smartphones. The phablet and superphone are high ASP, high profit smartphone sub-segments which look especially promising as a super-high-growth market, which we forecast to expand over 300% between 2012 and 2017, bolstered by the recent addition of Apple iOS devices to a long list of Android- and Windows Phone-powered superphones.

The report below forecasts global handset sales by type from 2003 to 2017, and it identifies which categories will grow at above-average rates during the next five years. Types of devices covered include phablets, superphones, smartphones, smart feature phones, standard feature phones and basic phones.

Handset Sales Forecast by Type: Phablet, Superphone, Smartphone, Feature Phone & Basic Phone