In the beginning, the smartphone was God. Well, near almighty and invincible in the kind of sales its many players notched up, year after year. And the lull of the Covid-19 pandemic was followed on its heels quickly by the wave of revenge buying which uplifted sales right away.
But then, disaster stuck.
Two years of decline in sales followed, with 2023 becoming the weakest year for smartphone sales in a decade. Perhaps due to the economic uncertainties that tailed the post-pandemic years, it seemed that most people were holding on to their expensive phones longer, and simply not replacing a phone as they used to.
Hope is now at hand. “2024 was a year of recovery and normalisation after a difficult 2023,” said Tarun Pathak, research director at Counterpoint Research, one of the world’s leading telecom and tech consultancies. “Smartphones continue to be an essential product, pivotal to people’s daily lives, and as macroeconomic pressures softened, the market started showing signs of recovery from Q4 2023 and has now grown for five consecutive quarters. Almost all markets showed growth, led by Europe, China and Latin America.”
However, Counterpoint indicates that smartphone sales numbers are still unlikely to reach the kind of peak levels seen in pre-Covid times. This is also ironic as the rise in sales of the past few quarters has been mainly due to the aggressive growth of Chinese players like Xiaomi, which had the fastest growth and ranked third, right behind market leaders Samsung and Apple whose sales largely flat last year, compared to the previous year.
Another Chinese player, OPPO, lost numbers but still held on to No.4, ahead of fast-growing Vivo, from the same stable. According to Counterpoint, the global market’s recovery was further augmented by the aggressive global expansion of challenger brands like HONOR, Motorola, and those of the Transsion Group; Huawei also made a resurgence in China.
AI-enabled smartphones would be the next driver of sales, volume and ticket prices. “While GenAI-capable smartphones remain limited to the premium segment for now, we expect GenAI to become a norm for mid-range devices as well. By 2028, we expect nine out of ten smartphones priced above $250 to be GenAI-capable,” predicts Counterpoint.
