China’s Smartphone Sales Shows Signs of Reaching Saturation Point

Ltd., the fourth largest smartphone maker globally, logged the highest sales growth rate of 46.3 percent, due mainly to strong worldwide sales and 4G smartphone sales in China.

Customers look at Apple iPhones at a mobile store in China.

Worldwide sales of smartphones in the second quarter grew at the slowest pace since 2013 as sales in China declined for the first time, according to research firm Gartner Inc.

China’s smartphone market showed a 4-percent decline in the second quarter of this year on a year-on-year basis.

“China has reached saturation-its phone market is essentially driven by replacement, with fewer first-time buyers”, Anshul Gupta, research director at Gartner, said. In the second quarter of this year, global mobile phone sales reached 445.75 million units, up 0.35 percent from 444.19 million units a year ago.

Samsung and Apple have focused on the world’s largest market, but pundits say they may now have to shift gears.

Meanwhile, iPhone sales increased 36 percent, which helped Apple gain 2.4 percentage points in market share.

With Apple opening at least two new shops in the UAE this year, its expansion in fast-growing emerging markets could be well timed to offset softer demand elsewhere.

In the smartphone operating system (OS) market (see Table 2), 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.

Emerging markets, including the Middle East and North Africa, are driving the growth of lower-end handsets, but China’s economic slowdown is affecting the top end of the market, according to the information technology consultancy.

While Windows Phone is a relatively cheap device, Gupta said Android phones are even cheaper and generally offer better features. More specifically, a total of 330 million smartphone units were sold in the second quarter, a rise of 13.5 percent from the same quarter in 2014.