We have been taking a look at the Smartphone market through the regular analyses from the folks at IDC, and the report for the 3rd quarter of 2013 is now out. The key takeaways from this quarter is that the overall smartphone market has grown at a record breaking pace, with 38.8% growth. The total Smartphone shipments are now at 258.4 million, higher than the earlier record last quarter, which was 237 million. The overall mobile phone market is now at a healthy 467.9 million shipments, with over 55% of the shipments being Smartphones. We saw smartphones surpass the feature phones this year, and the gap has widened even further. This is all attributed to the explosive growth in China, which contributes to more than 1/3rd of the total smartphone shipments. "Price points have declined significantly, driven largely by low-cost Android solutions. This has helped China to become one of the fastest growing smartphone markets in the world, accounting for more than one third of all shipments last quarter. We expect this trend to continue going forward." Companies like Huawei and Lenovo are based in China and have seen huge double digit growths of 76.5% and 77.6% respectively to gain them a ...Source: http://www.fonearena.com/blog/86261/more-than-250-million-smartphones-shipped-in-q3-2013-market-posts-a-record-38-8-growth-idc.html