Smartphone sales recorded the slowest growth rate since 2013 in the second quarter of 2015 globally, as per a latest report from Gartner. Worldwide sales of smartphones to end users totaled 330 million units, an increase of 13.5% over the same period in 2014.
The report said that this is the first time China has registered a slowdown in terms of the sales in smartphone market. The biggest smartphone market reported a 4% year-on-year decline during the second quarter of 2015. Anshul Gupta, research director at Gartner said that demand for lower-cost 3G and 4G smartphones continued to drive growth in emerging markets, overall smartphone sales remained mixed region by region in the second quarter of 2015.
“China is the biggest country for smartphone sales, representing 30 percent of total sales of smartphones in the second quarter of 2015. Its poor performance negatively affected the performance of the mobile phone market in the second quarter. China has reached saturation — its phone market is essentially driven by replacement, with fewer first-time buyers. Beyond the lower-end phone segment, the appeal of premium smartphones will be key for vendors to attract upgrades and to maintain or grow their market share in China.”
said Gupta.
Apple continued to dominate the high-end of the smartphone sector, with iPhone sales increasing by 36% during the three months to June, a 2.4 per cent increase in market share. South Korean rival Samsung’s premium Galaxy S6 and S6 Edge handset sales suffered as a consequence, as unit sales declined by 5.6%, a 4.3% loss in market share terms. While sales of smartphones in China may have decreased, the country’s smartphone companies are well represented among the biggest manufacturers in the world with Huawei, Lenovo and Xiaomi listed in the top five vendors according to Gartner.
In terms of the OS Android’s global share was affected by the weak performance of China in the second quarter of 2015 and the strong performance in China of Apple, which has taken share from Android for the last three quarters. Android saw its lowest year-over-year growth of 11 percent with share reaching 82.2 percent in the second quarter of 2015. Microsoft continued to struggle to generate wider demand for Windows Phone devices.