Samsung showed a quick demonstration of a thick-looking phone that folds out to become a tablet. — Samsung/dpa
Sales figures for smartphones continue to rise – last year it grew 5% globally, with customers spending more on premium models.
Market research institute GfK reports that the premium trend shored up the industry which would otherwise have seen the numbers of phones sold shrink by 3%.
The firm says the market for phones costing US$800 (RM3,250) and above grew from 9% in 2017 to 12% last year, though the affordable segment for phones in the US$150 to US$400 (RM600 to RM1,630) range still accounted for 46% of the global market last year. In total 1.44 billion units were sold in 2018.
GfK regional senior market insights manager Alexander Dehmel says the firm’s Consumer Life Study finds that users now prefer to own fewer but higher quality models which is why they are willing to pay premium prices.
They expect a better experience and want larger storage and screen sizes, and cameras with more megapixels.
The recently announced Samsung Galaxy S10 and S10+ and last year’s Huawei Mate 20 both have triple cameras.
Strong demand for premium smartphones increased sales to US$522bil (RM2.12tril) in 2018 and Asia-Pacific contributed for nearly half at US$254bil (RM1.03tril).
According to the report, released to coincide with Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, customers in Asia-Pacific bought over 732 million smartphones last year.
The biggest spender in this region is China, accounting for 60% of the market value and 54% of the market volume.
“The Chinese market consumes the majority of the global smartphone production, as well as being the home of local brands that are becoming increasingly global,” says Dehmel.
He adds that around 40% of the Chinese brands produced in 2018 were sold outside of China.
India was the second largest market in Asia-Pacific and accounted for 161million smartphones sold last year or over US$28.5bil (RM116mil).
Dehmel says this was driven by consumers upgrading from feature phones to their first smartphones.
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