40 million quad-core smartphones shipped in 2012

Sales of high-end smartphones exceeded 40 million worldwide last year, while the overall number of smartphone sales grew by almost 47 per cent from 470 million in 2011 to 690 million, according to new figures published by Berg Insight.
The growth was boosted primarily by sales of higher-end devices with unsubsidised retail prices in excess of €400 and low-cost smartphones priced around $100 and below.
Initially launched in 2011, smartphones with dual-core application processors offered more than double the power of previous devices. Quad-core handsets then followed in 2012, offering mobile consumers a wide range of high-end devices to choose from across a wide range of prices.
Andre Malm, Senior Analyst, Berg Insight, said: "It becomes more difficult for consumers to make comparisons between handsets when application processor vendors introduce SoCs based on different CPU architectures and core counts, each with different performance depending on specific workload."
Berg has also predicted that nearly all of the projected 1.5 billion smartphones sold in 2017 will posses dual-core processors at the very least, while the majority will contain quad-core processors.
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