Gartner, a world leading information technology research, has collaborated with IDC in estimating the growth of smartphone shipments in 2016. The company informs that for the time being, we should not expect double-digit growth in terms of smartphone shipments.
Gartner projects 7 percent increase in the deliveries of smartphones this year whereas there was a 14 percent increase in deliveries during the year 2015.
The company also believes that the times when the growth rates were exponential are hard to come again.
For instance, Gartner has estimated 1.5 billion handsets will be shipped in 2016 and even by 2020, this number won’t reach 2 billion and will hover around 1.9 billion.
The company also reported that 2010 was the golden year for intelligent handsets when a staggering 73 percent year-over-year growth was recorded.
Further, the reason for such a fall is the presence of intelligent handsets in North America, Western Europe, Japan and Asia-pacific market. Around 90 percent of the population living in these aforementioned regions already own a smartphone.
On the same note, Roberta Cozza, senior Director at Gartner, informed that the people in these mature markets have widened the upgrade cycle from 2 to 2.5 years. She believes that the customers are ready to wait a little longer for upgrading their handsets as they do not feel compelled to change the handset every two years, wondering if they might lose on an important new feature.
However, India is one of the countries that has tremendous potential says, Annette Zimmerman, Research Director at Gartner. She informed, “India has the highest growth potential. Sales of feature phones totaled 167 million during 2015 accounting for 61 percent of total mobile phone sales in India”.
Even though India is a major consumer of phones but because of low per capita income, most (70 percent) of the handsets purchased in India were sold for $150 or less.
