With so much talk about rivalries between Apple and Samsung, Android vs. Windows 8 or iOS, it's hard to believe that feature phones are still a major part of the global cell phone market. However, it wasn't until the most recent financial quarter that smartphones finally took over the world, as it were, and surpassed feature phones in global sales.
With a 46.5 percent jump in sales, smartphones have started to outsell feature phones for the first time according to a Gartner study via Mashable. Feature phones, better known as flip-phones or bars account for any type of low-end cellular device that doesn't support internet connectivity or have as many features or memory as a smartphone like the iPhone or Samsung Galaxy, have previously accounted for more than 50 percent of the market around the world.
Assessing sales for the second quarter, the researcher estimated smartphones now account for 51.8 percent of mobile phone sales across the world. Meanwhile, fans of feature phones declined 21 percent to 210 million units in the second quarter.
According to Mashable, the study does not break down regional penetration of smartphones in any given area. However, a recent comScore report showed the smartphone penetration in the United States is at 59 percent overall.
Gartner found Samsung to still have the lead in the market in unit sales, however Apple's sales grew more since the second quarter of 2012.
Android is also a dominant force in the market with the OS taking 79 percent of the share. However, in the U.S. Android only accounts for 52 percent of the smartphone market, making the country an outlier in the otherwise Android dominated global market.
Mashable notes that the company walking away from this report with the best news is Apple, for increasing its world smartphone sales. With the low-cost iPhone C coming out, the company will only increase its market share by breaking into the low-end market that is currently dominated almost unopposed by Android.
