Apple and Samsung remain leaders as smartphone use tops a billion

Last quarter, over a billion smartphones were in use across the world. It’s the highest number since records began 16 years ago by Strategy Analytics (when the smartphone market started, with the Nokia Communicator). They’ve predicted this will double to 2 billion in 2015. 

This time last year, 700 million smartphones were used. There’s still room for growth though: if we assume that everyone has one smartphone (some have two, personal and work but we’ll ignore that), then six out of every seven people on the world still don’t have a smartphone.

According to Investors.com, the smartphone world didn’t see much growth from the early 2000s till the iPhone launch – those who needed BlackBerries had them, but no one really used smartphones for personal use. When the iPhone launched, suddenly people started seeing smartphones as personal items as well. They were no longer the domain of important business types. Smartphones have taken on leaps and bounds in the past five years, and the user experience and growth today would have been unheard of pre-iPhone.

Since then, Blackberry and Nokia have seen sales fall (especially Blackberry) while Apple and Samsung have seen their market share explode; they now control more than half the market and are some of the few smartphone manufacturers that can turn a profit.