Berg Insight puts 2010 smartphone sales total at 295 million

The one benefit of firms releasing their smartphone projections at the same time is the ability to compare them.

When stacked up against Pyramid Research's recent predictions – which pegged mobile sales as a whole at 1.8 billion units by 2015 – it's fair to say Berg Insight's take is an optimistic one.

The firm claims in 2010 alone, smartphone manufacturers shipped 295 million units to retail throughout the course the year – that's up on Pyramid's numbers, which suggested 279 million phones had hit the shop shelves.

The big figure, however, is made in reference to 2015. According to the firm's projections, smartphone shipments will hit 1.2 billion in five years' time, growing at a compound annual growth rate of 32.4 percent.

The global smartphone userbase – which Berg Insight claims currently sits at 470 million active users – will top 2.8 billion by 2015, with the primary growth coming from medium to low-end smartphones.

Such figures largely compliment Pyramid Research, which claimed total mobile sales – including feature phones, as well as smartphones – will hit 1.8 billion by 2015.

Though Berg Insight's 1.2 billion naturally fits into such a scale, it would mean smartphones would make up more than 66 percent of all mobile sales

Both firms agree that the cheaper phones will drive most of the growth, with Pyramid Research having claimed OEMs with handsets available for consumers on a tighter budget will benefit the most in the coming years.

"Chipset developers and handset vendors are working on technologies that will ensure a good user experience also for low cost smartphones," said Berg Insight senior analyst André Malm.

"The challenge is to develop a handset with enough memory, graphics performance and processing power to run the operating system with multiple applications while ensuring a responsive system with fluid user interface and still keep costs down."

[source: Berg Insight]