Telecom analyst company CCS Insight has predicted that 1.86 billion mobiles will be shipped in 2013 and that 53% of these will be smart phones. By the end of 2013 5.9 billion mobiles will be in use around the world. By 2017 they say 2.3 billion mobiles will be sold and that 75% will by then be smartphones and 650 million of these will be LTE capable.
CCS say that the smartphone market will be driven by lower cost units in developing markets and that Apple will have to sacrifice margins on its iOS devices if it wants to keep up with market growth. They also say that as the big two Apple iOS and Google Android battle with two companies desperate to make a mark in Microsoft and Blackberry there are a number of upstarts like Tizen, Firefox OS, Sailfish OS, Baidu Yi and Aliyun waiting in the wings.