India will overtake the U.S. as the 2nd largest smartphone market

The US is starting to see its position in different departments being challenged by newcomers, especially China, when it comes to economic standing in the world’s eyes. Having said that, the US is also the number 2 smartphone market in the world, but their position is rather precarious since The Guardian reports that research data by Mediacells showed that India will ultimately overtake the US, knocking them to third place where the “Top 10 markets by smartphone sales rank-list” is concerned.

Phone users in India and China will together buy more than 500m smartphones in 2014, comprising half of the total that will be sold in 47 key countries, according to a new forecast. They will also add more than 400m new users of internet-enabled phones to the global network, vaulting India ahead of the US to make it the second-largest country for smartphone use in the world. The surge in new smartphone users will also create a stage where cheap phones using Firefox OS could begin to gain a foothold in south America, with the vast majority of the rest upgrading from featurephones in developing countries expected to buy an Android phone.