Global smartphone sales have increased by 4.3 per cent in Q2 2016 (April – June) to 344 million units, according to a latest research report of market research firm Gartner. In Q2 2015, the smartphone sales volume stood at 330 million units.
Further, the report suggests that amongst the top 10 global smartphone brands, only 5 showed growth in their sales. Interestingly, four of them were Chinese brands including Huawei, OPPO, Xiaomi, and BBK Communication and one being the South Korean giant Samsung. For those who don’t know, BBK Communication owns Oppo and Vivo smartphone brands.
Coming to the market share, Samsung had about 22.3 percent in Q2 2016 which was almost 10 percent more than Apple’s 12.9 percent market share. This is not a shocker as we have been continuously witnessing decline in Apple’s share over the time. The main reason being Apple’s premium pricing strategy. The next line was Huawei with 8.9 percent followed by OPPO and Xiaomi with 5.4 percent and 4.5 percent market share respectively.
“Demand for premium smartphones slowed in the second quarter of 2016 as consumers wait for new hardware launches in the second half of the year,†commented Anshul Gupta, Research Director at Gartner, in a statement.
According to Anshul, the decline in sale of feature phones by 14 percent LED to the decrease in overall sales of mobile phones in Q2 2016. Apart from Japan, all the major markets showed decline in the demand for smartphones with the sales coming by 4.9 percent. On the other hand, all the emerging markets expect the Latin America indicated commendable growth resulting in 9.9 percent increase in demand of smartphones, report said.
When talking about the Operating System, Android is up their at the top with 86 percent market share in the review period (Q2 2016) followed by Apple’s iOS with 12.9 percent and Windows and Blackberry at 0.6 percent and 0.1 percent respectively. This is quite evident with the fact that Android’s importance in budget and mid-range smartphones have been increasing over the years. Whereas, there are hardly a couple of devices that run on iOS, the number of smartphones running on Android has no count. Manufacturers like Samsung, HTC, and Motorola have been releasing 2-3 phones for different price brackets at the same time. We won’t be surprised if these figures increases further more in the next review period given Apple’s not planning to jump into the budget smartphone category.
It’s interesting to note that where every other company is introducing a new smartphone in sub Rs 15,000 category, one has to wait at least a couple of years to buy an iPhone for the same price.