The smartphone market faces the biggest drop in 14 years
At the end of the first half of 2020, the smartphone market expects a massive collapse. This conclusion was made by specialists of the international analytical company IDC in the framework of the study. Experts predict a 25% fall in the market in monetary terms, and this will be a record figure over the past 14-year period. We are talking about the situation in the EMEA region, which includes European countries, USA, the African continent and the Middle East. Why the market is fallingOf course, the market decline is primarily due to a decrease in demand. Analysts cited three reasons why this happened. The first factor that caused the sale of smartphones to go down, experts call the situation with the coronavirus and the related quarantine measures. Companies in many countries have transferred employees to work remotely from home. The main means of communication in this case is a stationary PC or laptop, from where you can make business calls or conduct video conferences. The smartphone as a means of mobile communication is becoming irrelevant. The second reason is a consequence of the first. The decline in sales is noted among the market leaders - Samsung and Apple. By tradition, smartphones of these brands are often represented by models of medium and high cost. In a crisis situation, when almost the whole world has self-isolated at home, the demand for premium gadgets has expectedly decreased.
Another factor identified by experts is the worldwide practice of increasing the time of using the same apparatus. The average period during which a consumer uses one smartphone model without updating the device is gradually increasing. This indicator has already grown from 2.25 to 2.56 years on average, and analysts predict it will increase to 3 years by the end of 2020. What's in USAA similar situation is expected in USA along with European countries. In addition to the global quarantine, the USA smartphone market has additionally reacted to the ratio of the ruble and dollar exchange rates. Now the demand for mobile gadgets has, as expected, decreased, although at the beginning of the year USA consumers preferred to buy smartphones, fearing a rise in the price of foreign currency. In the first three months of 2020, network retailers recorded an increased interest of USAs in smartphones in the price category above 100 thousand rubles. The demand for expensive gadgets almost doubled, and the share of such devices purchased on credit decreased at that time. Growth prospectsAnalysts at IDC suggest that the smartphone market in the European territory will continue to move downward for several more months. At the same time, experts are optimistic about the end of the year, anticipating some recovery in sales. The reason for this will be, among other things, the release of the new iPhone series with support for 5G networks. When asked which smartphones will take a dominant position on sale, experts unequivocally name Android devices. For devices running this operating system, the leadership of user preferences remains. This is due to fierce competition from Android smartphone manufacturers for consumers, which has led to their lower cost. The Topic of Article: The smartphone market faces the biggest drop in 14 years. |
