Smart vs. Dumb: What Kind of Cell Phone Do You Own? Sales of smartphones have finally surpassed sales of regular handsets worldwide, a new report says.
By Jason Fell
Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.
As an entrepreneur, what would you do without your smartphone? The ability to check email, read and edit documents and even manage payroll from one's mobile device has become an integral part of everyday business life.
But, hold on. Maybe the better question is: Do you even own a smartphone?
A new report from research firm Gartner says that smartphones have outsold more basic handsets worldwide for the first time. Ever.
During the second quarter, smartphone sales reached 225 million units, Gartner said, up 46.5 percent from the second quarter of 2012. Sales of regular "dumb" phones totaled 210 million units, a decline of 21 percent year-over-year.
For the smartphone wars aficionados: Samsung sold more than any other smartphone maker, moving more than 71 million units. Apple, meanwhile, came in second selling almost 32 million smartphones. LG came in third selling 11.4 million units.
For some, it might be difficult to believe that smartphone adoption hadn't overtaken dumb phone sales a long time ago. At this point, most grandparents have learned to use such marvels of the modern world as laptops, smartphones and even social media, right?
According to Gartner, most of the smartphone market growth is happening outside the U.S. "Asia/Pacific, Latin America and Eastern Europe exhibited the highest smartphone growth rates of 74.1 percent, 55.7 percent and 31.6 percent respectively, as smartphone sales grew in all regions," the report says.
