Samsung looks for global smartphone sales to hit 500 million units in 2012

Samsung Mobile Display, a division of the Korean electronics giant, told Reuters that smartphone sales would continue to grow and grab market share from feature phones over the next few years. The Mobile Display unit expects 500 million of the smart devices to be bought in 2012, up sharply from the expected figure of 170 million purchased this year. Not only are smartphones being sold in huge numbers, they are also taking market share away from other slices of the cellphone pie. Samsung Mobile Display is looking for these models to account for 29% of total handset sales in 2012, up from the current 14% of revenue that they produce.

The Display manufacturer is a 50-50 joint venture between Samsung Electronics and Samsung SDI and expects touchscreens to account for 50% of the sales of major portable devices by 2013. In turn, that growth would lead to the use of  organic light-emitting diode (OLED) displays in 50% of all  mobile phones in 5 years. OLED is considered the next generation display form that would allow for thinner devices with sharper images than the other forms of displays currently in use.

source: Reuters via BGR