WASHINGTON: Worldwide smartphone sales this year are expected to post just a single-digit increase in sales for the first time this year, US-based advisory firm Gartner said.
Citing a research report, Gartner said that smartphone sales are estimated to reach 1.5 billion units worldwide this year, representing a year-on-year increase of 7 percent.
Total cellphone sales are expected to hit 1.94 billion units this year, up slightly from the 1.92 billion units seen last year.
“The double-digit growth era for the global smartphone market has come to an end,” Gartner’s research director Ranjit Atwal said in a statement. “Historically, worsening economic conditions had a negligible impact on smartphone sales and spending, but this is no longer the case.”
Gartner said that sales in China and North America, two of the most important smartphone markets in the world, are expected to remain flat, up only 0.7 percent and 0.4 percent respectively.
Although smartphone sales in emerging markets continued to grow, the pace has showed signs of slowing down, the firm said.
It is possible that 150 million cellphone users in the Asia-Pacific region might put their plans on hold to upgrade their feature phones to smartphones from now through 2019, the firm said, adding that such users are waiting until the functionality and price of a low cost smartphone become more attractive.
Smartphone prices have not fallen far enough to prompt consumers to upgrade their devices from low-end feature phones to low-end smartphones, Gartner research director Annette Zimmermann said.
“Vendors were not able to reduce the price of a ‘good enough to use’ smartphone lower than US$50,” Zimmermann said.
Despite the lower sales growth in the global market, Gartner said that countries such as India are expected to help generate growth in new mobile phone users.
Smartphone sales in India are expected to rise 29 percent this year, with a double-digit pace likely to continue in that nation for the next two years, Gartner esitmated.
