Global sales of smartphones overtake feature phones for the first time

STAMFORD, Conn., Aug. 15 (UPI) -- Global smartphones sales have surpass sales of feature phones for the first time in the second quarter of 2013, U.S. market research firm Gartner reported.

Smartphones rose to 51.8 percent of world mobile phone sales, Gartner said, passing feature phones, whose sales dropped 21 percent since the same quarter of 2012.

"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," Gartner's report said.

Surveying mobile phone operating systems, Gartner said Android's lead improved from 64.2 percent market share in the second quarter of 2012 to 79 percent in the same period of 2013, thejournal.com reported Thursday.

While iOS still holds the No. 2 spot, Gartner said, it slipped from 18.8 percent to 14.2 over the year.

"With second quarter of 2013 sales broadly on track, we see little need to adjust our expectations for worldwide mobile phone sales forecast to total 1.82 billion units this year," Anshul Gupta, principal research analyst at Gartner, said in a statement.