Here's what users want from Apple next (AAPL)

BI Intelligence

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Apple has always been a secretive company and as a result rumors have constantly swirled around what product it will release next.

Prior to the Apple Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC), digital advertising company Fluent released results of a survey asking more than 2,200 US consumers what type of product they would most like Apple to make next.

• 29% of respondents picked televisions as the number one product they wanted Apple to release next.
• 25% want Apple to release automobile console displays, or infotainment centers.Interestingly, this was the top product iPhone users included in the survey wanted Apple to release. 
• 20% picked self-driving cars. However, it's highly unlikely that Apple will make any announcement at the conference around releasing a car.
• Only 9% want Apple to release an Amazon Echo competitor. This comes just a few weeks after rumors surfaced that the tech giant would be following Google's example and release an Echo competitor.

Whatever the tech giant decides, it's clear that it cannot put all its eggs in the iPhone basket, as the global smartphone market is expected to slow considerably over the next few years. Despite a record-setting holiday quarter, 2015 was likely the last year of double-digit growth for smartphone shipments.

Mature markets were at the heart of this year’s deceleration. Adoption has reached new highs in key markets in the United States, Europe, and China. The pool of first-time buyers in these countries is shrinking rapidly, and sales are now primarily coming from phone upgrades.

Meanwhile, emerging markets will continue to see robust shipment growth. India and Indonesia, in particular, will help fuel a large share of the shipments growth within the global smartphone market over the next few years.

Will McKitterick, senior research analyst at BI Intelligence, Business Insider's premium research service, has compiled a detailed report on smartphones by country that forecasts the market through 2021 to reflect slower, stabilizing growth in the long term.

Here are some key points from the report:

• The global smartphone market is still growing at a steady pace due to more widespread adoption in emerging markets. We estimate the global market will hit about 2.1 billion units shipped in 2021.
• Shipments growth over the past few years has been driven by the falling price of smartphones, which has made handsets more accessible in emerging markets. The average selling price of a smartphone in India nearly halved between 2010 and 2015.
• With relatively low smartphone penetration, we forecast Indian smartphone shipments to grow rapidly over the next five years. Nevertheless, India has a long way to go before it surpasses China as the world’s leading market for smart handsets. India is estimated to account for roughly 10% of the global smartphone market in 2016, considerably less than China’s 30% share.
• The global platform wars are over, even as smartphone adoption continues to rise across various markets worldwide. Android and iOS are estimated to account for 97.3% of global platform market share in 2015, compared to 96.3% last year.
• Apple closed the year with another strong quarter on the back of its iPhone 6s and iPhone 6s Plus launches. Still, the vendor saw a slight decline in YoY growth of its share of the market in the face of stiff competition from Samsung and Chinese vendors such as Huawei.

In full, the report:

• Forecasts global smartphone shipments through 2021.
• Explores why India is the next high-growth smartphone market.
• Breaks down the global smartphone platform wars.
• Discusses smartphone vendor performance market share.

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