Gartner Records the First Ever Decline in Smartphone Sales

Gartner’s latest figures have recorded the first ever decline in global smartphone sales.

The figures showed that peg sales of smartphones to end users in Q4 2017 was nearly 408 million units. This means that there was a 5.6% decline over the Q4 2016 figure.

Gartner showed that Samsung has apparently seen a year-on-year decline of 3.6% in Q4. Apple’s iPhones fell by 5% in the holiday quarter.

According to Gartner, one main factor as to why this is happening is due to existing smartphone owners selecting quality models and keeping them for longer. This means the replacement cycle is increased.

The slowing of upgrades from smartphones due to a lack of quality “ultra-low-cost” smartphones is also a problem for the market.

The later availability of Apple’s new iPhone X also caused the phone company’s Q4 performance to decrease, as it drove slower upgrades of its two other smartphones, the iPhone 8 and 8 Plus.

The iPhone X also experienced component shortages and manufacturing capacity constraints, which resulted in a long delivery cycle for the smartphone.

Samsung resulted in having a 20.9% market share in comparison to Apple’s 14% in the full 2017 year.

Gartner concluded by saying the total smartphone sales exceeded 1.5 billion units last year, a year-on-year 2.7% increase.

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