Smartphone shipments will continue to drive mobile phone market growth and an estimated 82 percent of mobile phones will be smartphones by the end of 2016, up 12 percent from 2015, new data from Gartner, a leading technology research and advisory company has revealed.

“We are witnessing a shift to basic phones in the smartphone market,” Roberta Cozza, research director at Gartner says.

“Users are also opting to replace within the basic smartphone category without necessarily moving to high-end smartphones, especially in China and some other emerging markets”, Gartner says.

Local and Chinese brands are delivering more capable basic smartphones with appealing features at a lower price, which means that there is less of a need for users to upgrade to a premium smartphone.

Instead, these more advanced and attractive basic smartphones fulfill users’ needs at a lower cost.

“At MWC 2016, a number of Android vendors will, as usual, release the next generation of their smartphone flagships,” Cozza adds.

“We’ll hopefully see an increased focus on differentiation by enabling unique, but relevant experiences, expansion to new functionalities and better tie to key app and service ecosystems.”