Apple iPhone Sales: Asia/Pacific Picks Up Slack Says Gartner

Apple iPhone Sales: According to Gartner, Inc., only one region, Asia/Pacific, showed growth in mobile phone sales during the first quarter of 2013. While this may appear to be bad news for Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL), as well as its competitors, overall worldwide “mobile phone sales to end users totaled nearly 426 million units.”

In short, this is a 0.7 percent increase when compared to the same period last year.

However, what we really want to pay attention to is the growth of smartphone sales. The study added that “smartphone sales totaled 210 million units in the first quarter of 2013, up 42.9 percent from the first quarter of 2012.”

Anshul Gupta, principal research analyst at Gartner, touched on what this means for Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL) and the many other companies, such as Samsung, that rely so heavily on smartphone sales:

“More than 226 million mobile phones were sold to end users in Asia/Pacific in the first quarter of 2013, which helped the region increase its share of global mobile phones to 53.1 percent year-on-year. In addition, China saw its mobile phone sales increase 7.5 percent in the first quarter of 2013, and its sales represented 25.7 percent of global mobile phone sales, up nearly 2 percentage points year-on-year.”

The growth in China is something Apple has to be excited about, since the Cupertino based company has made it no secret that this could be its biggest market moving forward.

The report went on to break down how these numbers impact the major players in the smartphone industry, including Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL), Samsung, and Nokia.

Here is the excerpt pertaining to Apple:

“Sales to end users reached 38.3 million units in the first quarter of 2013 as Apple was able to burn some of the inventory built at the end of 2012 as iPhone 5 was rolling out in more markets, and as the company prepared for Chinese New Year. China is a key contributor to overall sales for Apple, and Gartner analysts saw evidence of this in the first quarter of 2013, when sales reached close to 7 million units in mainland China alone thanks to the lower price of the iPhone 4.”

Once again, Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL) is relying on sales in China to boost its overall sales numbers.

For a better idea of how Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL) stacks up to the competition, check out the graph, courtesy of Gartner, published on the next page: