Motorola announced the new Moto X at a New York event this week, with the phone giving Motorola an opportunity to finally contend for third place Smartphone vendor. This week 51Degrees.mobi looks at global Smartphone web traffic from hardware vendors contending for the third place market spot.
Global Smartphone Web Traffic - Handset Vendors
The race for third place is heating up with HTC and Motorola's' smartphone traffic continuing to take a downward slide. HTC have been losing market share throughout all of 2013 and even with better sales figures from the One, HTC still haven't managed to climb back up. Over the last six months web traffic from HTC smartphones has dropped 6.63% from the start of the year.
Meanwhile, LG have been able to keep a consistent share of the market after their slight upturn at the start of 2013, gaining 1.18% of the market share whilst Motorola have dropped 2.47% so far in 2013. If Motorola continues to lose web traffic at this rate then within two months they will slip down to fourth place.
With LG, Motorola and Nokia all looking to release a new flagship phone in the near future, we might see drastic changes within the race for third place selling smartphone vendor.
Both Sony and Nokia are the current outsiders in the race and both have seen great gains in traffic share. In the last few months Nokia has begun to pick up the pace after a generally steady start to the year, gaining 2.29% over the last six months. However coming up from the rear at lightning speed is Sony, who have been showing impressive gains all year. In just six months Sony has more than doubled its market share, rising from 5.19% to 10.82%. Bolstered by the sales of the Xperia Z family it won't only be a short time before they leave Nokia trailing in the dirt.
If the change in market shares of each respective vendor continues at the same rate we will see a drastic change in 12 months from now. HTC will cling onto their current third spot with a share of 28.62%. Impressively Sony will have overtaken all the other competitors and have taken the forth overall place with 22.08%. The small gains made by LG will be enough for them to hold onto their current position as fifth overall position with 17.03%. Likewise Nokia will hold onto their current sixth position with 15.64%, hot on the heels of LG. The big loser would be Motorola who would drop to the bottom of the pile in seventh overall position with 15.47%, essentially swapping places with Sony.
The race isn't over yet
Just like a new set of Pirelli tyres can change a Formula 1 race so can a new Smartphone release change the global traffic share. This week LG officially unveiled its new flagship the LG G2. Similarly across the other side of the pacific ocean Motorola are releasing their new flagship the Moto X, the first Motorola Smartphone to be overseen by Google and entirely made in the United States.
Not to be forgotten by their competitors we also have the battle of the cameraphones ready to heat up between Nokia with the Lumia 1020 and Sony with the yet unreleased Xperia Honami. Like many of the recent Sony Smartphones it will be IP57 certified, look for the announcement event in Berlin on the 4th September.
HTC has recently released the HTC one mini but will that be enough to stop their slow decline in traffic. It's unlikely we will see a new flagship from HTC so early after the HTC One, will they try their hands at a dedicated cameraphone? or do they have an ace up the sleeve yet to be announced?
Its hard to predict how these phones will impact their shares in mobile traffic, after all the HTC One was proclaimed by many reviewers to be the best Smartphone currently available, it sold well but still didn't increase the traffic share of HTC.
The only way to see how these new smartphones effect the mobile web traffic is to stay tuned to the 51Degrees.mobi Chart Of The Week. ;)