The smartphone market has room to grow

This conclusion was reached by analysts at Nielsen, who assessed the penetration level of smartphones in emerging markets, including Russia.

However, the main revelation of the report lies elsewhere. According to Nielsen, China is the only BRICS market where smartphones outnumber other mobile "handsets." Two-thirds of subscribers in China use "smartphones."

In contrast, feature phones (devices without a touchscreen, QWERTY keyboard, or operating system) still dominate the markets in India and Russia, making up 80% and 51% of the markets, respectively.

Regarding Brazil, the situation is less straightforward: 44% of the "Latin" market belongs to feature phones, 36% to smartphones, and 21% to "multimedia" devices (which Nielsen defines as phones with a touchscreen or QWERTY keyboard but without an operating system).

Unfortunately, the data provided by the analysis company is somewhat outdated as of today. It is dated to the first half of 2012. Nevertheless, it seems to us that it still accurately reflects the current situation.

The data was collected through surveys. In each country, 3,900 mobile subscribers aged 16 and older were surveyed. In Brazil, however, only 1,000 subscribers were surveyed. As for China, the survey did not include residents of the country’s agricultural areas, so the high smartphone penetration level may have been significantly overstated.