India will overtake the U.S. as the world’s second largest smartphone market in the next three years, but both countries will remain some way behind China, which will record more than half a billion smartphone sales in 2017 alone.
China, India and the U.S. together will account for 51% of global smartphone sales last year, according to new figures published by Strategy Analytics on Wednesday, which predicts that figure will remain above 50% through 2017.
The analyst firm forecasts that China alone will record 458 million smartphone sales this year, rising to 505 million in 2017.
"China has been the engine of global smartphone growth in recent years, but China is now maturing and slowing," said Linda Sui, director at Strategy Analytics.
"India is fast becoming the next major growth wave," she added.
Indeed, growth in China will slow to just 3% in 2017, while India’s predicted 17% growth rate for that year will enable it to take the number two spot from the U.S., where sales will increase by just 1%. 174 million smartphones will be sold in India in 2017, compared with 169 million in the U.S.
"India’s growth is being driven by low smartphone penetration, expanding retail availability of devices, wealthier middle class consumers, and aggressive promotions from local smartphone brands like Micromax," Sui said.
"No serious global hardware or software player can afford to ignore the huge Indian smartphone market today," added Woody Oh, also a director at Strategy Analytics.
The company predicts that 118 million smartphones will be sold in India this year, up from 82 million in 2014.
Global smartphone sales will come in at 1.47 billion this year, up 16% on last year. By 2017 the total will reach 1.67 billion.
