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Strategy Analytics sees improving trend in second half of year after smartphone shipment growth of just 1% in Q2, names China’s OPPO as rising star.
Smartphone growth worldwide was "sluggish" in the second quarter of this year, according to figures published this week by Strategy Analytics, but the analyst firm believes the market bottomed out in the first half of 2016 and that the outlook for the remainder of the year is brighter.
Global smartphone shipments grew by 1% year-on-year to 340.4 million units in Q2, weighed by factors such as increasing market maturity in major countries like China, and key political events like the U.K.’s Brexit vote.
"However, there are emerging signs that the global smartphone market has reached a bottom in the first half of 2016, and the growth outlook for the second half of this year is improving due to multiple big new product launches from Samsung, Apple and others," said Linda Sui, director at Strategy Analytics.
Market leader Samsung performed strongly in Q2, recording 77.6 million unit shipments compared with 71.9 million a year earlier, to raise its market share to 22.8%.
Its growth appears to have come at Apple’s expense. The iPhone maker shipped 40.4 million handsets in the most recent quarter, over 7 million fewer than in the same period of 2015, reducing its market share by 2.2 percentage points to 11.9%.
"With a new Galaxy Note 7 flagship model rumoured to be on the way, Samsung will be able to strengthen its smartphone leadership in the second half of the year," predicted executive director Neil Mawston.
He added that "Apple continues to face iPhone fatigue," noting that the new iPhone SE has done little to rectify that.
Chinese players Huawei, OPPO and Xiaomi make up the remainder of the global top five smartphone makers, in that order, their market shares ranging from 9.4% to 4.3%.
OPPO in particular caught the analysts’ attention, having more than doubled its smartphone shipments compared with Q2 last year to 18 million.
"OPPO is very popular in China and is internationalising rapidly across India, Asia and other emerging markets," Sui said, describing the firm as "a rising smartphone star to watch."
Xiaomi, meanwhile, is facing pressure in China from the likes of OPPO and others, and has failed to secure a meaningful presence in new markets, like India. Its shipments fell by almost 5 million to 14.7 million in Q2.
