Global smartphone growth slows to 7-year low in Q4

The slowdown in the global smartphone market started to impact all players in the fourth quarter, according to Juniper Research.

Global shipments slowed to the lowest rate of fourth-quarter growth since 2008, the company said. But total shipments are still edging towards 1.4 billion per year.

Even the usually impervious Apple reported a mere 0.4% year-on-year growth in iPhone shipments for the quarter, although its success earlier in the year helped the company post a full-year shipment growth of 20%. Apple ended the year with a market share of around 16.4%.

But Samsung remained the market leader during 2015 with an estimated 22.4% market share. The company shipped around 317 million devices during the year, and even managed to report a year-on-year increase for the fourth quarter due to success with new devices in developing markets.

Chinese smartphone vendor Huawei bucked the trend with a year-on-year increase in shipments for the fourth quarter of 35% to 32 million. The company exceeded its target of 100 million shipments for the year.

By contrast, the previously rapidly growing Chinese vendor Xiaomi missed its target of 80 million shipments for the year by nearly 5 million.

It was also a rough fourth quarter for non-Chinese vendors outside the Apple-Samsung duopoly. HTC continued its decline with a 36% year-on-year slump in sales. BlackBerry was unable to leverage the launch of the Android-based Priv for growth, shipping only 734,000 devices during the quarter.

LG reported a sales decline of around 2% to 15.3 million, while Sony reported a 36% year-on-year decline in shipments to 7.6 million.

“From these results, it is clear that there is no ecosystem that will insulate vendors from the slowing market,” a Juniper Research spokesperson said.

“As features become ‘good enough’ everywhere and subsidies end in the US, Juniper expects the market to slow further as Asian markets become saturated and American customers have to pay the full cost of their smartphones.”

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