There are fewer first-time smartphone buyers in China, causing replacement purchases to drive the market, Gartner said.
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Apple on the other hand shipped 48 million smartphones and grew its global market share to 14.6 percent.
Android was by far the biggest player in the market, claiming four out of every five sales at 82.2% share. Gupta said the decline in China “negatively affected the performance of the mobile phone market in the second quarter”.
According to the latest research report by market researcher Gartner, the overall smartphone market recorded its slowest growth pace in the last two years. In the second quarter of 2015, global smartphone sales in value terms was up 7 per cent year-on-year, while in volume terms, it grew 5 per cent year-on-year, GfK said in a statement. Gartner attributed this to China reaching saturation point, with most sales there driven by replacements and upgrades – and numerous upgraders switching to Apple.
Global spend on smartphones rose at the slowest rate since 2013 for the second quarter of 2015, according to magic quadrant wizards Gartner.
Samsung remains the top dog for market share in smartphones, but continues to see its market share erode away.
Chinese vendor Huawei earned the biggest jump in sales growth during the second quarter at 46.3 percent, winning third place among all smartphone vendors. Eastern Europe, Middle East and Africa, and Asia/Pacific regions, excluding China, reported the fastest growth in the second quarter. “Emerging markets will continue to show huge growth in the coming years as contribution from Smartphone in overall sales has been less than 30 percent in many market”, Gupta said.
The analyst company has also just produced a report on the Indian mobile market, forecasting that the number of mobile connections in the country will grow to 880 million this year, an increase of 5 per cent on 2014.
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In the smartphone operating system market, Android lost out to Apple again – both largely because of how the respective systems fared in China, with Apple taking share from Android in the country for the past three quarters. And at the same time, Samsung is facing stiff competition from other Chinese rivals like Xiaomi and Huawei, which are continuously eating into Samsung’s share with their increase in popularity of budget smartphones.
