No, you’re not imagining things—everyone around you does have a smartphone these days.
A new forecast released Tuesday from the industry analysis firm IHS iSuppli says that smartphone shipments will account for 54 percent (up from 46 percent this year) of the global cellphone market in 2013. This marks the first time that smartphones are the majority of manufactured phones.
The prediction adjustment comes just one week after T-Mobile announced a low-end Android phone for $100 in the United States.
“This represents a major upgrade for the outlook compared to a year ago, when smartphones weren’t expected to take the lead until 2015,” said Wayne Lam, senior analyst for wireless communications at IHS, in a statement.
“Over the past 12 months, smartphones have fallen in price, and a wider variety of models have become available, spurring sales of both low-end smartphones in regions like Asia-Pacific, as well as midrange to high-end phones in the United States and Europe. The solid expansion in both shipments and market share this year of smartphones will make them the leading type of mobile phone for the first time, and shipment growth in the double digits will continue for the next few years.”
IHS added that by 2016 it expects more than two-thirds of the global mobile phone market to be smartphones.
