The global shipment and sales of smartphones recovered slightly in the first quarter of 2018, recording a 1.3 percent profit, compared to the same period in 2017. The market suffered a decline in 2017 of about 0.3 percent.
A new report from research and advisory firm Gartner, revealed that nearly 384 million smartphones were sold in the first quarter of 2018, representing 84 percent of total mobile phones sold.
The IDC had reported that total smartphone shipments and sales went down to 1.465 billion from 1.469 billion it was in 2016.
Experts see aggressive competition in the Chinese market which dropped by 5 percent in 2017 as largely responsible for the instability in the market and predicts that a big recovery is may not be possible in 2018.
“Even though it declined 5 percent in 2017, China remains the focal point for many given that it consumes roughly 30 percent of the world’s smartphones,” Ryan Reith, program vice president with IDC’s Worldwide Quarterly Mobile Device Trackers, “But plenty of pockets of growth can be found beyond China. India is now grabbing headlines and the market itself is going through some rapid transformation. Local India manufacturing continues to ramp up, despite still having a heavy dependence on China for components. The boom in India is likely to continue in the years to come, but the move toward building up local production has certainly caught the eye of many in the industry.”
Although Samsung still topped the charts with total shipments of 78.56 million, the mobile manufacturer saw a decline of 0.21 million when compared to the first quarter of 2017. As a result of increasing competition in the mid-tier market, the company’s overall market share dropped by 0.3 percent to 20.5 percent.
“Demand for premium and high-end smartphones continued to suffer due to marginal incremental benefits during upgrade,” Andshul Gupta, research director at Gartner said. “Demand for entry-level smartphones (sub-$100) and low midtier smartphones (sub-$150) improved due to better-quality models.”
Chinese mobile phones companies Huawei and Xiaomi which produces smartphones in the low midtier and entry-level categories saw the most growths. Huawei shipments and sales grew by over 6 million units to a total of 40.4 million units, ensuring that it now controls 10.5 percent of the smartphone market compared to the 9 percent it held in 2017.
Xiaomi more than doubled its shipments, adding an extra 16 million units, representing a total of 28 million and grabbing 7.4 percent market share.
According to Gartner, Xiaomi was the clear winner of the first quarter, achieving a growth of 124 percent year on year and clinching the number 4 spot globally.
Apple which shares the top two spots with Samsung also saw a few gains, selling a little over 2 million more smartphones than it did in Q1 2017. It was enough to increase its market share from 13.7 percent to 14.1 percent in 2018.
