Moscow - Cellphone sales in Russia last year increased 3.4% to 42.2 million units and 15.6% to 205 billion rubles, according to data provided by OJSC Mobile TeleSystems (MTS).
The sale of smartphones increased 60% to 13 million units and 60% to 138 billion rubles.
Smartphone sales accounted for 31% of the cellphones sold, up 11 percentage points from 2011. In monetary terms, they accounted for 67% of the total number of the cellphones sold, 19 percentage points up from the year before, MTS said.
Smartphone retail sales by MTS were even with the overall market at more than 30% of total phones sold, MTS Press Secretary Valeria Kuzmenko told Interfax. Twenty-three percent of MTS subscribers have them.
According to the MTS statistics, the average retail cellphone price in Russia last year increased 12% to 4,861 rubles. On the other hand, the average market price for a smartphone decreased 0.6% from 2011 to 10,706 rubles, due to rising sales in the low end pricing segment.
MTS reckons that the share of low-cost smartphones (priced up to 5,000 rubles) increased to 22.4% from 13.4%, that of those in the middle pricing range (5,000 to 10,000 rubles) contracted to 39.3% from 45.4%, that of those costing from 10,000 to 15,000 rubles slipped to 19.1% from 21.6%, and that of those costing upwards of 15,000 rubles dipped to 19.3% from 19.6%.
“The growth in the segment of low-cost smartphones seen in 2012 will continue this year. Our research shows this. There is demand for inexpensive smartphones. Half the cellular operator subscribers who now use ordinary telephones would buy smartphones if they could afford them,” Kuzmenko said.
“MTS, in the framework of the development of its line of branded devices in 2013, plans to get completely away from telephones and fully focus on smartphones, mainly in the price range of up to five thousand rubles,” she said.
The MTS research, conducted among the subscribers of the biggest Russian cellular operators, shows that now the biggest proportion of smartphone users are people aged up to 24, 56% of whom have them. “A substantial portion (68%) of Russian users have yet to switch to smartphones, concerned about the technical complexity of using them,” a company press release says.
The average frequency at which a smartphone is used for making calls in Russia is ten hours a week (for regular cellphones one hour less). The proportion of mobile Internet users among smartphone owners has reached 80%, and on average they spend around fifteen hours a week online with their phones. An 86% majority of smartphone owners use offline applications, spending an average of 11 hours a week with them (among owners of regular cellphones, half use offline applications and use them four hours a week on average), according to MTS’s data.
In 2012, the smartphone leadership ranks shifted in Russia. Nokia slipped in sales to 21.1% last year from 41.3% in 2011, surrendering first place to Samsung, whose market share rose to 40.1% from 30.7%. HTC accounted for 8.2% of smartphone sales in Russia last year (9.2% in 2011), Sony for 8.5% (6.3%), and Apple for 6.8% (up a single percentage point).
As for operating systems, last year ended with the Android OS in the lead (67.2% of all smartphones sold), followed by Samsung’s bada (8%), Nokia’s Asha (7.7%), Apple’s IOS (6.9%), Windows Phone (5.9%), and Symbian (3.6%).
MTS is Russia’s second biggest cellphone retailer by number of outlets. Factoring the company’s partners in, the MTS retail chain numbered 4,462 stores at the end of last year, including 71 flagship stores. The market leader, Euroset, had around 5,000 and Svyaznoy 3,322.
The MTS cellphone market evaluation jibes with Euroset and Svyaznoy figures. Euroset chief Alexander Malis told Interfax that, per Euroset’s appraisal, there were 42 million cellphones sold in Russia last year, of which 12.8 million were smartphones. Svyaznoy puts sales at 40 million devices, of which 30% were smartphones.
