COVID-19 has caused irreversible damage not just to the lives of people but also businesses. This damage has been witnessed across different sectors -- whether it¡¯s air travel, education or even technology.?
And now, a new report has revealed that global smartphone sales declined by a considerable 5.7 percent in the third quarter of 2020.
This is according to a report by Gartner, a total of 401 million smartphone units were sold. Comparing this with the third quarter of previous years, the decline is 8.7 percent year-over-year.?
As of now, the top spot has been claimed by Samsung with a whopping 22 percent market share (80.8 million units), followed by Huawei at 14.1 percent market share (51.8 million units). The third?spot is claimed by Xiaomi with a 12.1 percent market share (sale of 44.4 million units). Apple sits on the fourth spot with 11.1 percent market share and 40.5 million units sold in Q3 of 2020.?
Researchers blame the uncertainties in the market, as well as fear of the next wave of the novel coronavirus to limit people¡¯s spending on smartphones this year. Alternatively, they feel that the lack of 5G network upgrades has limited the opportunity for smartphone vendors.?
Anshul Gupta, senior research director at Gartner, explains, ¡°Consumers are limiting their discretionary spend even as some lockdown conditions have started to improve. Global smartphone sales experienced moderate growth from the second quarter of 2020 to the third quarter. This was due to pent-up demand from previous quarters.¡±
He added, ¡°Early signs of recovery can be seen in a few markets, including parts of mature Asia/Pacific and Latin America. Near normal conditions in China improved smartphone production to fill in the supply gap in the third quarter which benefited sales to some extent. For the first time this year, smartphone sales to end-users in three of the top five markets i.e., India, Indonesia and Brazil increased, growing 9.3%, 8.5% and 3.3%, respectively.¡±