{"id":327,"date":"2018-02-05T13:20:16","date_gmt":"2018-02-05T12:20:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/britishdailynews.co.uk\/?p=327"},"modified":"2018-02-05T13:20:16","modified_gmt":"2018-02-05T12:20:16","slug":"global-smartphone-market-drops-9-in-biggest-ever-fall","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/britishdailynews.co.uk\/?p=327","title":{"rendered":"Global smartphone market drops 9% in biggest ever fall"},"content":{"rendered":"

The global smartphone market fell 9% in a year this quarter, the biggest fall in smartphone history, with even Apple\u2019s\u00a0iPhone<\/a>\u00a0sales down 1% as users hang on to their phones longer.<\/p>\n

For Apple, which is shipping 5m fewer smartphones than a year ago, the decline is offset by an\u00a0increase in the average sale price<\/a>\u00a0of its iPhone, thanks to the popularity of its \u00a31,000 iPhone X.<\/p>\n

But as\u00a0Samsung<\/a>\u00a0and others join Apple in pushing the top end of the market to higher prices the demand for new phones appears to be waning. Data from Strategy Analytics shows global smartphone shipments shrank year-on-year from 438.7m to 400.2m in the fourth quarter of 2017.<\/p>\n

Linda Sui, director at Strategy Analytics, said: \u201cIt was the biggest annual fall in smartphone history. The shrinkage in global smartphone shipments was caused by a collapse in the huge China market, where demand fell 16% annually due to longer replacement rates, fewer operator subsidies and a general lack of \u2018wow models\u2019.\u201d<\/p>\n

The\u00a0iPhone X<\/a>\u00a0adopted the market trend of all-screen designs first introduced by the\u00a0Samsung Galaxy S8<\/a>\u00a0in March. But big leaps in smartphone features, such as ever better cameras, are now behind us, with incremental increases in artificial intelligence now taking the spotlight.<\/p>\n