Worldwide smartphone market is expected to grow 55 percent in 2011 over the previous year, thanks to an expanding user base, research firm International Data Corp. (IDC) said in a report released on Thursday.
IDC predicted that vendors will ship a total of 472 million smartphones this year, compared to about 305 million units shipped in 2010.
Fast sales of smartphone, which will grow more than four times the rate of the overall mobile phone market this year, are being fueled by falling average selling prices, increased phone functionality, and lower-cost data plans among other factors, which make the devices more accessible to a wider range of users, IDC analysts noted.
"The smartphone floodgates are open wide," Kevin Restivo, a senior research analyst with IDC, said in a statement.
"Mobile phone users around the world are turning in their 'talk- and-text' devices for smartphones as these devices allow users to perform daily tasks like shopping and banking from anywhere," he added.
According to Restivo, the growth trend is particularly pronounced in emerging markets where adoption is still in its early days and growth in regions such as Asia-Pacific and Latin America is expected to be dramatic over the coming years.
Global shipments of smartphones will reach 982 million units by 2015, nearly double the number of 2011, IDC projected.
