In fact, according to the data which was released yesterday, the IDC predicts that 2015 will see the first full year in which the Worldwide smartphone sales growth is in the single digit territory.
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This decline is a stark reversal from IDC’s earlier prediction that Windows Phone would grow by 34 percent in all of 2015, shipping a grand total of 46.8 million phones. The figure represents a downward revision of 0.6 percent to account for slowing growth in Western Europe, Latin America, and Asia/Pacific, excluding Japan, the firm said.
Lenovo Group has emerged as the 4th largest smartphone brand by volume in India, according to IDC’s Asia Pacific Quarterly Mobile Phone Tracker, Q3, 2015 with a market share of 9.5%.
With major markets becoming saturdated, and growth slowing, it’s going to be up to the manufactuerers to find a way to entice customers into continuing to buy new phones.
That will depend on capturing value-oriented first-time smartphone buyers as well as replacement buyers, Reith notes. We believe that, in a number of high-growth markets, replacement cycles will be less than the typical two-year rate, mainly because the components that comprise a sub-$100 smartphone simply do not have the ability to survive two years. The market share for Microsoft’s Windows Phone is expected to remain flat at around two percent in the coming years, with shipment declines forecast for both 2015 and 2016.
More than 1.4 billion smartphones will be shipped worldwide in 2015, compared to last year’s 1.27 billion, IDC said.
Apple, for example, has done this with its iPhone Upgrade Program, and several other vendors are expected to implement similar plans in the months ahead.
“Despite all the effort Microsoft has put in the launch of Windows 10, IDC does not expect Microsoft’s share of the smartphone OS market to grow much over the coming years”, the market watcher said in a statement. Despite numerous attempts by “alternative platforms” to enter the market, none have proved successful.
The struggle for Microsoft’s Windows Phone platform does not seem to end.
In addition to home grown smartphone makers, device makers such as Huawei, ZTE, Lenovo, LG, Sony, Microsoft, Samsung and Apple are also betting on the success of Indian smartphone market. That is expected to fall to 14.1 percent share by 2019. Apple could then target emerging markets with cheaper devices. However, the lead time to solve a problem of this nature does not present any immediate concerns to IDC.
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Windows Phone’s cause hasn’t been helped by Microsoft’s decision to focus Windows 10 on PCs and tablets, though Llama does predict that the company will eventually find partners willing to build smartphones running the new OS.
