Samsung Predicts ‘Intense’ Smartphone War 2013

Smartphone king predicts slowdown in 2013 in the wake of intensive competition and a “slew” of new devices.

Phone giant warns of smartphone slowdown as it powers ahead of Apple, Nokia and Co, predicting “intensified competition” in 2013, as established players like Samsung and Apple battle it out against newcomers Huawei, Sony, and ZTE.

“The furious growth spurt seen in the global smartphone market last year is expected to be pacified by intensifying price competition compounded by a slew of new products,” Samsung said on Friday.

The Koreans last week announced US$6.6 billion net profit on the back of stellar sales of Galaxy S III and ‘phablet’ Note II in particular, pushing operating profit rup a whopping 89.7% to 8.84 trillion won.

However, the S III maker admitted “competition intensified with new smartphone & tabletlaunches amid strong seasonality” in the final quarter of 2012.

“In the first quarter, demand for smartphones in developed countries is expected to decelerate,” Samsung predicts.

Samsung, who does not release the breakdown of mobile phone sales, sold 63.7 million smartphones in the fourth quarter, compared to Apple’s 47.8 m, acording to new figures from analysts IDC, and now accounts for 29% of the market ahead of Apple 21.8%.

However, IDC too warned about the emergence of new low cost devices from the likes Huawei and ZTE, Chinese makers who now both made it into the top 5 global smartphone vendors in Q4 2012.

However, its not all bad news and Samsung expects 4G LTE network to drive demand and replacement demand to increase in developed markets with expansion of the faster network and “solid demand” to continue in emerging markets led by demand of mid/low-end models.

And its the same story in the tablet market, where Samsung expect intensified competition amid strong growth as vendors like Asus, Acer and Toshiba all slug it out against iPad. But the Koreans also expecting a demand surge in emerging markets.

On the TV front, Samsung expects growth emerging markets and LED TV to drive from 80% in 2012 to mid-80% in 2013.

On the appliance front, it expect “low growth” to continue in developed markets and “moderate” growth in emerging markets

 Read: Samsung Profit Jumps 76%, Mobile Business Doubles