Analysts down at Counterpoint Research have just gone on to release their global smartphone shipments report for Q1 of this year. As it was expected, the sales for phone have indeed plummeted – doing so by 13 percent YoY due to the COVD-19 pandemic. On the other side of the story though, brands such as Realme as well as Xiaomi have actually shown an increase of 157% and 7% YoY. In fact, these two happen to be the only companies that aren’t seemingly affected all that much as a result of the pandemic. Also, the market share for 5G phones too has risen to eight percent. In comparison, it rose to only a single percent during this time last year. Mid-range phones will be the real deal during the pandemic.
For the very first time ever since 2014, the global smartphone shipments have actually gone on to drop below that of 300 million units within a single quarter. It also comes as no surprise that China was perhaps the most severely affected country by the coronavirus – which also originated from the country itself.
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Indeed smartphone shipments have seen a decline of 27% YoY in the country, meaning that the country now holds only 22 percent overall global market share – a four percent decrease from the 26 percent which was achieved last year.
In any case though, as far as the recovery process for the smartphone industry goes, analysts have laid down their predictions as they claim that mid-range phones will be the biggest winners of the pandemic. It is expected that sales of entry-level smartphones will go down because of the current market situation – this especially being the case in developing nations.
But at the same time, it is expected that the mid-range segment of the market will continue to thrive. On top of all this, since OEMS are gearing up to launch sub $300 smartphones that will be 5G enabled, one can only imagine that the mid-range segment of the market will indeed remain as the last hope for many companies.
