iPhone Fatigue Helps Undercut Smartphone Sales

By Douglas A. McIntyre Updated Jan 13, 5:11AM EST · Published Jul 28, 8:15AM EDT

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iPhone Fatigue Helps Undercut Smartphone Sales — © Thinkstock

Smartphone sales only rose 1% in the second quarter to 340 million units, according to research firm Strategic Analytics. One of the primary reasons is what the organization called “iPhone fatigue.” Apple Inc.’s (NASDAQ: AAPL) weakness has hurt the overall industry.

Total units shipped rose 1% from 338 million to 340 million.

Global smartphone shipments grew a sluggish 1 percent annually from 338.0 million units in Q2 2015 to 340.4 million in Q2 2016. Smartphone growth has slowed due to increasing penetration maturity in major markets like China and uncertainty surrounding major political events such as the Brexit EU referendum result. However, there are emerging signs that the global smartphone market has reached a bottom in the first half of 2016, and the growth outlook for the second half of this year is improving due to multiple big new product launches from Samsung, Apple and others.

Apple’s unit shipments fell to 40.4 million from 47.5 million in the second quarter a year ago. Market share dropped from 14.1% to 11.9%.

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Samsung continued to lead the industry with 77.6 million units shipped, up from 71.9 million in the year-ago quarter. Market share rose from 21.3% to 22.8%.

The only other smartphone company with huge global shipments was Huawei. Its shipments hit 32.0 million, up from 30.5 million. Market share grew from 9.0% to 9.4%.

As for the rest of the market Linda Sui, director at Strategy Analytics, added:

OPPO shipped 18.0 million smartphones and maintained fourth position with a record 5 percent global smartphone marketshare in Q2 2016. OPPO grew 137 percent annually in the quarter, outperforming all its major rivals. OPPO is very popular in China and is internationalizing rapidly across India, Asia and other emerging markets. OPPO is a rising smartphone star to watch. Xiaomi clung on to fifth place with 4 percent global smartphone marketshare in Q2 2016, tumbling from 6 percent a year ago. Xiaomi remains under pressure from OPPO, Vivo and others across China, while its performance in new markets like India has so far been lackluster.

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About the Author Douglas A. McIntyre →

Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.

McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.

His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.

A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.

TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.

McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.