Gartner: Worldwide phone shipments to go down 2.5% by the end of 2019
As were progressing further into the second half of 2019, Gartner Research released its latest report which looks at trends for global smartphone sales. According to the data, aggregate shipments will decline by 2.5% going from 1.55 billion units in 2018 to 1.52 billion by the end of this year.
Looking at the breakdown by region, we see that the largest drops will be felt in Japan with a 6.5% year over year decline, followed by Western Europe (-5.3%) and North America (-4.4%). On the other side, smartphone shipments will grow in Sub-Saharan Africa (+1.5%), Eurasia (+1.2%) and the Middle East and North Africa (+0.9%).
In mature markets, the high-end smartphone market is particularly oversupplied and commoditized, with higher average selling prices (ASPs) and no compelling new utility or experiences for users to upgrade to.
Analysts expect demand for new phones to drop even lower in the second half of 2019 due to slowing replacement rates across all price segments. Despite the advent of 5G phones, consumer interest in these devices will remain negligible in most markets throughout 2019.
Looking further on, 2020 will be a bounce-back year for global smartphone shipments with an estimated 2.83% increase compared to 2019. This growth will be driven by the larger availability of 5G networks and phones from all established manufacturers.
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