Consumer Electronics

Apple Woes Highlight Smartphone Sales Slowdown

Paul Ausick

Published: April 28, 2016 12:40 pm

Last Updated: January 13, 2020 10:08 am

When Apple Inc. (NASDAQ: AAPL) reported that iPhone sales declined by 16.3% year over year in the first quarter, the report underlined the slowdown in global smartphone sales in the quarter. Compared with the first quarter of 2015, global smartphone shipments fell nearly 6% to 320.3 million units.

According to data reported Thursday by Juniper Research, only Chinese smartphone maker Huawei grew shipments year over year, and only Samsung was able to match year-ago shipments. China’s Xiaomi, once the most popular new kid on the block, saw shipments drop 1% to around 14 million units. Lenovo experienced a similar percentage drop but shipped 15.9 million units in the quarter.

The top three vendors in the first calendar quarter were Samsung, which shipped 83 million units, Apple with 51.2 million units shipped and Huawei with some 27 million unit shipments.

Companies without a strong base in China fared as bad, if not worse. Microsoft Corp. (NASDAQ: MSFT) shipped just 2.3 million Lumia phones in the quarter and Sony Corp. (NYSE: SNE) posted a 57% year-over-year decline in shipments. BlackBerry Ltd. (NASDAQ: BBRY) posted a 53% decline in first-quarter shipments.

Juniper does not expect the rest of this year to see an about-face in shipments:

As the market as a whole slows, smartphone vendors need to adjust to targeting the replacement market. Large growth in other areas, such as Africa, is unlikely unless there is a dramatic reduction in the ASP (average selling price) of lower-end smartphones, meaning that the market decline will … continue throughout the year.

Apple attributed its lower iPhone sales to the success of the iPhone 6, which sold better than the company expected. The iPhone 6s, which offered only incremental improvements, was not able to boost sales in the same way the previous refreshes to the product have.

The latest iPhone, the SE, is selling better than Apple expected, a further sign that the market for new smartphones is more price-conscious than it has been.