Shipments of smartphones worldwide slumped by 25.9 percent in 2014 and will fall again next year by 12.4 percent.
That’s the opinion of market intelligence company Trendforce which said 1.17 billion smartphones left the factories this year and 1.31 billion will ship next year.
The reason, according to Avril Wu, an analyst at Trendforce, is because the penetration rate “is already very high while the market is saturated”.
She said that Chinese brands will represent 17 percent of handset shipments in 2015 – with competition intense. Lenovo, Huawei, Xiaomi, Coolpad, ZTE and TCL are competing on price meaning their margins are as thin as a cigarette paper. Trendforce thinks mergers and acquisitions over the next few years will be the inevitable conclusion of this trend.
Meanwhle, the iPhone 6 continues to sell well but brands using the Android and Windows operating systems find themselves competing on price. This will continue in the coming year.
The 4G network, she says, is now in place and will mature next year, with Qualcomm taking the lead over Mediatek in the semiconductor infrastructure required.
