知名投顧Jefferies & Co.本月份電訪數十大歐美電信商與零售商（美55%、英15%、德15%、法15%）後，提出對智機市場的最新觀點。

North American and European smartphone markets have matured. Optimism for volumes continued to increase for the second consecutive quarter. 68% of survey participants were optimistic in Feb, 48% in May, and 40% in August, but our December survey saw optimism bounce back to 58% and March continued to see strength with 65%. We believe the optimism surrounding flagship phone launches such as the Galaxy S5 contributed to the improved smartphone volume outlook rather than current sell-through. Survey participants’ optimism on pricing (i.e. belief that that smartphone pricing will come down) dropped sharply again to 18%. We believe the deteriorating pricing optimism is also due to the focus around upcoming flagship models. We believe pricing optimism is likely to increase slowly in the coming quarters as we expect white-box devices begin to infiltrate developed markets.

歐美智機市場已趨飽和，然GS5等旗艦機的上市有望帶動銷量上揚，亦須付出ASP大幅下滑18%的代價。接著白牌手機亦將逐漸擴散到已開發市場。

Samsung saw a sharp increase again after rebounding from 38% in our August survey to 55% in our December survey. 65% of survey participants in our March survey see Samsung models as the best-selling smartphone.

受訪者對GS5的大賣充滿信心。

No survey participant believed any Motorola or Blackberry device was a best- selling smartphone. HTC remained at 3% this quarter. While we believe its flagship products are well-received, the lack of scale will continue to significantly challenge the company.

Motorola跟Nokia都不被看好；HTC新旗艦機雖頗受好評，但缺乏規模經濟仍是該公司最大的挑戰

Our checks indicate that CQ1 builds have been cut from 34M to 31M. We trim our shipment estimate from 37.8M to 35.8M (about 5% below St). CQ2 builds remain stable at around 27M and we maintain our CQ2 shipment estimate of 33M. We continue to think that CQ1 and CQ2 will be choppy ahead of a strong iPhone 6 product cycle (“CQ2 a Transition Quarter Ahead of Strong iPhone 6 Product Cycle”). We are not overly concerned about recent reports about yield issues at TSMC. The ramp at TSMC is happening early than in prior years and we think that the most likely scenario is still that Apple’s launches the iPhone 6 in August.

預期Apple iPhone 6將按例在第三季發表，因此上半年iPhone出貨量應回落至3500萬支的季水平。

歐美已開發市場版圖，看來未有大改變；接下來就看亞洲與新興國家是否有出人意表的變數。