Smartphone Sales Decline Globally For First Time Ever

Smartphones Sales have declined globally for the first time since 2004 as Gartner’s recent figures record shows. Gartner began tracking smartphone market since 2004 and it is the first time that a decline has been noticed in smartphones sales worldwide.

In Q4 2017 408 million units of smartphones were sold globally which is 5.6% decline from Q4 2016.

Samsung is the topmost smartphone maker in the world. Samsung saw a decline of 3.6% in Q4 2017. Sales of second biggest smartphone maker Apple iPhone went down by 5%.

Gartner has given two reasons for the decline in smartphone sales in Q4. One is that there is slowing of upgrade seen to smartphones from feature phones as the quality lacks in cheap smartphones. Two is that smartphone companies tend to keep quality models for a longer period of time, not replacing them which provides less option for smartphone users to buy a new phone.

Apple’s decline is also accounted for the fact that the availability of iPhone X got late which made switching to a new phone impossible for the users for quite some time.

Read also: All you need to know about Mobile World Congress 2018

So Gartner feels that due to delay in availability of iPhone X in Q4 the sales went down so in the first quarter of 2018 an increase in sales can be seen of Apple.

Also, a boost in Samsung’s sales is expected in Q1 of 2018 as it reveals its new phones Samsung Galaxy S9 and S9 plus. Samsung S9 will run on Android 8.0 ‘O’, it will be powered by Qualcomm Snapdragon 845 (US) / Samsung Exynos (UK) having Cat 18 LTE support (1.2Gbps download speeds), a fingerprint scanner embedded in the display, dual rear, and front camera, Bixby AI assistant with dedicated button and USB-C.

Coming back to the smartphones sales, on a year on year basis as per Gartner, the overall smartphones sales passed 1.5 billion units in 2017 which is 2.7% increase from 2016.