“DDuring the pandemic, the market saw a significant drop in sales of ‘smartphones’, since the ‘focus’ of most consumers and companies was to acquire computers and tablets to meet the needs of working from home”, explains Francisco Jerónimo, vice president of IDC in Europe for the area of mobile devices.
Incidentally, “18% declines were recorded in some quarters”, he stresses.
In 2021, advances Francisco Jerónimo, “the market recovered, showing a growth of 8.4%”.
Consumers and businesses that have delayed smartphone replacement during the pandemic have done so in 2021 and the first half of 2022.
“However, the penetration rate of ‘smartphones’ is already above 85%, so the performance of this category is related to the smartphone replacement cycles”, so it was found that this cycle “slowed down in the second half of last year ” (since consumers had already bought a new mobile phone), “which led to a significant drop in sales”, he justifies.
In addition, in the second half of the year “the issue of the increase in the cost of living led to the remaining consumers who had not yet replaced their smartphone having postponed the decision”.
According to IDC, in Portugal Samsung, with a 42.3% market share, led sales of smart phones, followed by Xiaomi (23.3%) and Apple (16.6%).
In an analysis of the last five years, it appears that “only in 2021 did the smartphone market rise”, whose growth IDC considers to be due, “mainly, to the fact that consumers and companies have postponed the replacement of smartphones for the pandemic”.
In 2018, smartphone sales dropped 5%, in 2019 the drop was 4.7% and in 2020, 8%. In 2021, sales increased by 8.4% and last year they fell by 3.9%.
“The market has been in decline for some years now. As I mentioned, the penetration rate of smartphones is already above 85% of the population, so that any sale is a replacement of the terminal and not a new user. On the other hand, the smartphone sales have been at increasingly higher values”, stresses Francisco Jerónimo.
For example, the average selling price of smartphones rose 19% between 2018 and 2022.
Asked about the year in which the most smartphones were sold in Portugal, Francisco Jerónimo points to 2015.
“Smartphone sales reached their sales peak in 2015 with three million units sold or 620 million euros”, he says.
Since then, sales in units have been decreasing, with the value rising.
“Although the best year ever in terms of units was 2015 (…), sales were well below the total value in 2022”, stresses the vice president of IDC in Europe.
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