Smartphone shipments in the Philippines grew by 76 per cent last year and accounted for 47 per cent of the 26.8 million handset total, according to data from IDC.

A year ago smartphones only accounted for 24 per cent of total handset volume.

The strong growth was fuelled by budget offerings from local makers. Sub-PHP4,000 ($90) smartphone models accounted for more than 58 per cent of the smartphone total last year.

While feature phones still made up the majority of the mobile phone market in 2014, IDC said the past few months saw both local and international vendors increasingly shifting their focus towards smartphones. Prices continue to drop as component prices drop and original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) are able to produce cheaper devices.

“The narrowing price gap between smartphones and feature phones made smartphones more palatable to budget-conscious Filipino consumers,” says Jerome Dominguez, market analyst at IDC Philippines.

The Philippines is now the third largest market for smartphones in Southeast Asia, after Indonesia and Thailand. It was also the fourth country in Southeast Asia to ship more smartphones than feature phones, after Singapore, Malaysia and Thailand.

Smartphone shipments surpassed those of feature phones for the first time in Q3.

Local vendors saw their market share increase from 49 per cent in 2013 to 57 per cent last year. Global vendors’ market share dropped from 35 per cent to 28 per cent, while Chinese vendors experienced a slight drop from 16 per cent to 15 per cent.

Three local smartphone vendors made it into the top-five smartphone vendor list (by units shipped) in 2014. Cherry Mobile was ranked number one, while MyPhone was third and Torque was fifth.

Among the Chinese vendors, Lenovo was fourth.

Samsung still leads the pack of global vendors, followed by LG Electronics. As a newcomer to the smartphone market, ASUS also gained considerable share last year. The decline of Sony and BlackBerry contributed to the drop in the overall share of global vendors in the Philippine smartphone market.

IDC expects smartphone shipments to grow 20 per cent this year and prices to continue to decline as vendors push the price of smartphones to below PHP2,000 ($50).