Smartphones are destined to make up the bulk of handset shipments over the next five years as the number of devices shipped grows from 300 million last year to 1 billion per year in 2016, according to a new report from Juniper Research. However, the report said market competition in the sector will become so intense that the best opportunity for new entrants will be to focus on developing economy smartphones with an unsubsidised sale price of $150 or less. Juniper said that the falling cost of smartphone components and the availability of open source operating systems, such as Android, will enable economy models to capture around a third of the overall smartphone market. Release
