Huge mobile milestone! One billion smartphones shipped in 2013

Mobile reached a huge milestone in 2013, having shipped one billion smartphones in just one year!

This is a 38.4% increase from the previous year where they shipped 725.3 million devices. The smartphone industry is growing at an alarming rate and amazingly there is still a huge demand for smartphones.

The smartphone market is extremely competitive right now, the phablet market is continually growing, which looks to have forced Apple into developing their own phablet.

At the end of 2013, around 18% of smartphones were phablets (a smartphone with a screen size five inches or great), which is up from 7% in 2012. By the end of this year experts estimate that it could hit 25%.  

The smartphone industry is expected to continue to grow in the next year but is likely to begin to slow down in the following years.

Samsung was the clear leader in global smartphone shipments in 2013, due to the high demand for the Galaxy S III, the Galaxy S4 and the Galaxy Note.

However Apple also hit new records of shipment volume towards the end of last year, due to the release of the iPhone 5S and 5C. Despite record sales though Apple had the lowest year-over-year increase of all the leading smartphone manufactures.