Global smartphone shipments down 60 percent

The newest IDC report is out:

Smartphone vendors shipped a total of 355.2 million units during the third quarter of 2018 (3Q18), resulting in a year-over-year decline of 6.0%. This was the fourth consecutive quarter of year-over-year declines for the global smartphone market, which raises questions about the market’s future. IDC maintains its view that the market will return to growth in 2019, but at this stage it is too early to tell what that growth will look like.

Always interesting report, but it only tells one half of the story: there is no real indication in this report of the value of those shipments, or the average selling price. For a company, in the end, only money matters. If there is not much loyalty from all those shipments, volume will not mean much in a few months (think Nokia in 2008).

In a shrinking global market by volume — and 6% is not a small decrease — it is interesting to see some companies having huge growth, while Samsung is shrinking. Hard to tell what is happening from only those numbers, but it looks like Samsung is losing marketshare mostly in the low-end to middle-range market, while its shares in the high end do not grow much. I would not be surprised if Samsung would now only focus on the high end of the market, where they might be fine with smaller marketshare in volume, while maintaining a good reputation untainted by cheaper phones, and higher margins.

Intriguing to see Apple still gaining marketshare while raising the average selling price of iPhone ($793 versus $618 last year). Seems like Apple — strong in the high end market (selling 43% of all phones priced above $400) — anticipated this trend and betted on higher price to compensate for a lack of growth.

Fascinating too that China alone represents a third of the global shipments.