Berg Insight

HOME

ABOUT US

REPORTS

SUBSCRIPTIONS

FAQs

NEWS ARCHIVE

News

In the media

NEWS ARCHIVE / News

2013-06-18
Shipments of quad-core smartphones reached 40 million units worldwide in 2012
According to a new research report by Berg Insight, sales of high-end smartphones equipped with quad-core application processors reached 40 million units worldwide in 2012. Total smartphone sales grew almost 47 percent to 690 million units in 2012, up from 470 million units in the previous year. High-end smartphones with unsubsidised retail prices above € 400 and low-cost devices priced at around € 100 and below contributed to most of the growth in the smartphone category in 2012. Sales of high-end devices increased from about 150 million units in 2011 to an estimated 250 million units in 2012. Going forward, most of the growth will come from low-cost smartphones costing less than € 100, followed by mid-range handsets. The first smartphones with dual-core application processors were released in early 2011, offering more than double the computing power of the previous generation high-end smartphones. Sales of dual-core smartphones accelerated in 2012, reaching an estimated 250 million units, up from 70 million units in 2011. The first handsets with quad-core processors were launched in early 2012. A wide range of standalone application processors and system-on-chips (SoCs) that integrate application processors and cellular basebands are becoming available to address different price points in the increasingly competitive smartphone category. This will likely bring more choice for consumers, while product marketing becomes more challenging for handset vendors. “It becomes more difficult for consumers to make comparisons between handsets when application processor vendors introduce SoCs based on different CPU architectures and core counts, each with different performance depending on specific workload”, said André Malm, Senior Analyst, Berg Insight. Berg Insight anticipates that nearly all of the 1.5 billion smartphones sold in 2017 will be equipped with at least dual-core processors and the majority will feature quad-core processors.

2013-06-17
Shipments of NFC-enabled handsets grew 300 percent in 2012
According to a new research report by Berg Insight, global sales of handsets featuring Near Field Communication (NFC) grew 300 percent in 2012 to reach 140 million units. Growing at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 48.2 percent, annual shipments are forecasted to reach 1 billion units by 2017. Wider adoption of NFC in mobile phones began in 2011 and accelerated in 2012 when the top-ten handset vendors released nearly 100 NFC-enabled models. NFC technology enables numerous applications such as information exchange, device pairing for establishing Bluetooth or WLAN connections, access control, electronic ticketing and secure contactless payments. Berg Insight anticipates that it will take some time before the stakeholders agree on business models for payment networks and access to secure elements that store the sensitive user information in NFC-enabled handsets. “It is the sum of many possible use cases for NFC rather than one single killer application that make the technology compelling for smartphone vendors already today. Once developers gain experience with NFC and get access to a larger installed base of compatible handsets, we can also expect to see entirely new use cases not yet imagined”, concluded Mr André Malm, Senior Analyst, Berg Insight. Connectivity technologies such as Bluetooth, WLAN and GPS are already standard features in most smartphones. Shipments of WLAN-enabled handsets increased to 700 million units in 2012 and the attach rate reached 44 percent. Several new WLAN standards and certification programmes are now being adopted to enable new use cases and improve the user experience when using WLAN in handsets. Wi-Fi Direct facilitates making device-to-device connections to enable content sharing and wireless connection to peripherals. Wi-Fi Miracast enables peer-to-peer HD video and audio streaming without cables, for instance between a smartphone and a TV. Wi-Fi Passpoint enables mobile devices to discover and connect to WLAN networks automatically without user intervention. “Mobile operators that were initially sceptical about WLAN are now adopting a range of strategies for using WLAN as a cost-effective data offloading solution to handle the rise in data traffic from smartphones”, said André Malm. He adds that WLAN is also a central component in hybrid location solutions that can enable reliable indoor navigation services. Hybrid location solutions fuse signal measurements from global navigation satellite systems (GNSS), cellular and WLAN network signals, together with data from sensors such as accelerometers, gyroscopes, compasses and altimeters.

2013-06-05
The infrastructure for NFC mobile wallet services is being rolled out
According to a new research report from Berg Insight, there were NFC mobile wallet services commercially live in 13 countries worldwide at the end of Q1-2013, up from just 6 countries at the end of 2011. However, these services are still available to a very small number of consumers. “With the exception of a few projects in Asia-Pacific, there are only three NFC mobile wallet services in the world that have an effective addressable market of more than 100,000 people. These three services are Google Wallet and Isis in the US and Turkcell Wallet in Turkey”, said Lars Kurkinen, telecom analyst, Berg Insight. However, this will change substantially during the next few years due to the massive rollouts of NFC-enabled phones, NFC-ready POS terminals and TSM solutions. The market for NFC-enabled mobile phones reached a breakthrough in late 2011 and accelerated further in 2012 as new NFC handsets were introduced by all leading handset vendors except Apple. Berg Insight estimates that total NFC handset sales grew 300 percent to 140 million units worldwide in 2012. The global installed base of NFC-enabled handsets reached 170 million units in 2012, which corresponds to approximately 3.3 percent of all mobile handsets in use. Between 2012 and 2017, the installed base of NFC-enabled handsets is forecasted to grow at a CAGR of 65 percent to reach 2.1 billion units at the end of the forecast period. The penetration rate for NFC across all handset segments will similarly increase to approximately 32 percent by 2017. Global shipments of NFC-ready POS terminals doubled to an estimated 3.9 million units in 2012. Major vendors such as VeriFone and Ingenico are already now including NFC as a standard feature in almost all new products. Berg Insight forecasts that the global installed base of NFC-ready POS terminals will grow at a CAGR of 46.1 percent from 6.7 million units in 2012 to 44.6 million units by 2017. The penetration rate of NFC-ready POS terminals is projected to be an estimated 87 percent in EU27+2 by the end of 2017. The penetration rate in North America and Latin America will be 82 percent and 68 percent in the same year respectively, whereas penetration in the Rest of World will reach 39 percent. TSM solutions, which are among other things needed for securely issuing payment credentials over-the-air to NFC-enabled phones, are being taken into use at an unprecedented pace by mobile network operators, banks and other companies. At the end of 2013 there will be around 140 companies that use a TSM solution in commercially live NFC mobile wallet services worldwide, up from only 57 at the end of 2012. The most active region for TSM projects is currently Asia-Pacific, followed by Europe, North America and the Middle East.

2013-06-04
In-store mobile wallet payments will reach € 78 billion in Europe and North America by 2017
According to a new research report from Berg Insight, in-store mobile wallet payments in EU27+2 is forecasted to grow from less than € 0.1 billion in 2012 at a compound annual growth rate of 275 percent to reach € 45 billion in 2017. This will correspond to 1.6 percent of the credit card and debit card payments at the end of the forecast period. Many new projects are now being initiated and by the end of 2013 there will be mobile wallet services commercially live in nearly half of the EU27+2 countries. The companies behind these wallet services include many of Europe’s largest mobile operators, banks and retailers such as T-Mobile, Orange, Telefónica, BNP Paribas, Barclays and Auchan. In North America, mobile wallet users completed in-store payments for a total of US$ 0.5 billion (€ 0.4 billion) during 2012. However, the vast majority of these payments were made using Starbucks’ phenomenally successful smartphone app, whereas mobile wallets that can be used at multiple merchants have yet to gain traction. In the longer term, universal mobile wallets such as those provided by Isis, Google and MCX will drive the majority of the mobile in-store purchase volume, which is expected to reach US$ 44 billion (€ 33 billion) by 2017. The required infrastructure for mobile wallet services is being rolled out and key partnerships are being formed between mobile network operators, financial institutions, retailers and other companies. However, before mobile wallets can attract the mass market, a broad range of services beyond payments need to be made available to consumers. “People do not have a problem with cash or payment cards today. Value-added services that enable new shopping experiences before, during and after payments will be what truly distinguish mobile wallets from the traditional payment instruments”, said Lars Kurkinen, telecom analyst, Berg Insight. He adds that the next few years will be a very important time during which mobile wallet operators have an opportunity to improve their services. “Gaining an early lead in the market can be crucial, as in the long term only a limited number of mobile wallet services will survive in each market due to network effects”, concludes Mr. Kurkinen.

2013-05-06
The installed base of container tracking systems grew 54 percent in 2012
According to a new research report from the analyst firm Berg Insight, the number of active remote container tracking units deployed on intermodal shipping containers was 137,000 in Q4-2012, up from 89,000 a year earlier. Growing at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 49.1 percent, this number is expected to reach 1.0 million by 2017. The penetration rate of remote tracking systems in the total population of containers is estimated to increase from 0.7 percent in 2012 to 4.1 percent in 2017. Berg Insight’s definition of a real-time container tracking solution is a system that incorporates data logging, satellite positioning and data communication to a back-office application. The market for container tracking solutions is still in its early stage. Aftermarket solutions mounted on high value cargo and refrigerated containers are the first use cases to adopt container tracking. Orbcomm has after recent acquisitions of StarTrak, PAR LMS and GlobalTrak emerged as the largest vendor of wireless container tracking devices. Omnitracs, ID Systems and Skybitz are prominent vendors focusing on inland transportation in North America, which is so far the most mature market for container tracking solutions. Envotech, Pointer Telocation, Savi Technology, PearTrack Systems, Honeywell Global Tracking and Kirsen Global Security are examples of companies which have been successful in offering dedicated solutions targeting the global end-to-end container transport chain. “The installed base of intermodal containers worldwide has now reached 20 million, which represents a significant market opportunity for the telematics industry”, said Johan Svanberg, Senior Analyst, Berg Insight. He adds that several prominent wireless M2M operators including Orbcomm, AT&T, Everything Everywhere and Telenor even have assumed the role of end-to-end solution providers of container tracking. Container telematics can help stakeholders to comply with regulations and meet the high demands on security, information visibility and transportation efficiency that comes with global supply chains. “It has been challenging to find the right business models to suit the diverse range of players in the intermodal transportation chain, but technology advancement, declining hardware prices and market awareness are starting to come together to make remote container tracking solutions attractive” concluded Mr. Svanberg.

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 ...