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Gartner expects smartphone shipment growth to slow to 7% this year.
Slowing growth in global smartphone shipments will result in a flat mobile phone market in 2016, predicted Gartner this week.
The research firm predicted that smartphone shipments will reach 1.5 billion this year, up 7% on 2015. However, the total mobile phone market – which includes smartphones as well as basic phones – will notch up shipments of 1.94 billion units, up very slightly from 1.92 billion last year.
"The double-digit growth era for the global smartphone market has come to an end," said Ranjit Atwal, research director at Gartner, in a statement on Thursday.
The company expects 2016 smartphone sales in China and North America to be broadly flat in 2016, with the markets exhibiting growth of 0.7% and 0.4% respectively.
Gartner attributed the slowing growth to economic uncertainty and longer handset replacement cycles.
"As carriers’ deals become more complex, users are likely to hold onto phones, especially as the technology updates become incremental rather than exponential," noted Annette Zimmerman, who is also a research director at Gartner.
"In addition, the volumes of users upgrading from basic phones to premium phones will slow, with more basic phones being replaced with the same type of phone," she predicted.
Meanwhile, in emerging markets, Gartner expects many consumers to delay upgrading from feature phones to low-end smartphones until the functionality and price of the latter becomes more desirable.
Looking further ahead, Gartner expects annual mobile phone shipments to rise to 1.98 billion in 2017, and 2.02 billion 2018.
