Tuesday, February 23rd 2021
Gartner Says Worldwide Smartphone Sales Declined 5% in Fourth Quarter of 2020
Global sales of smartphones to end users declined 5.4% in the fourth quarter of 2020, according to Gartner, Inc. Smartphone sales declined 12.5% in full year 2020.
"The sales of more 5G smartphones and lower-to-mid-tier smartphones minimized the market decline in the fourth quarter of 2020," said Anshul Gupta, senior research director at Gartner. "Even as consumers remained cautious in their spending and held off on some discretionary purchases, 5G smartphones and pro-camera features encouraged some end users to purchase new smartphones or upgrade their current smartphones in the quarter."
The launch of the 5G iPhone 12 series helped Apple record double-digit growth in the fourth quarter of 2020. Apple surpassed Samsung to retake the No. 1 global smartphone vendor spot (see Table 1). The last time Apple was the top smartphone vendor was in the fourth quarter for 2016.
Full Year 2020 Results
Samsung experienced a year-on-year decline of 14.6% in 2020, but this did not prevent it from retaining its No. 1 global smartphone vendor position in full year results. It faced tough competition from regional smartphone vendors such as Xiaomi, OPPO and Vivo as these brands grew more aggressive in global markets. In 2020, Apple and Xiaomi were the only two smartphone vendors of the top five ranking to experience growth.
Huawei recorded the highest decline among the top five smartphone vendors which made it lose the No. 2 position to Apple in 2020 (see Table 2). The impact of the ban on use of Google applications on Huawei's smartphones was detrimental to Huawei's performance in the year and negatively affected sales.
"In 2021, the availability of lower end 5G smartphones and innovative features will be deciding factors for end users to upgrade their existing smartphones," said Mr. Gupta. "The rising demand for affordable 5G smartphones outside China will boost smartphone sales in 2021."
"The sales of more 5G smartphones and lower-to-mid-tier smartphones minimized the market decline in the fourth quarter of 2020," said Anshul Gupta, senior research director at Gartner. "Even as consumers remained cautious in their spending and held off on some discretionary purchases, 5G smartphones and pro-camera features encouraged some end users to purchase new smartphones or upgrade their current smartphones in the quarter."
Samsung experienced a year-on-year decline of 14.6% in 2020, but this did not prevent it from retaining its No. 1 global smartphone vendor position in full year results. It faced tough competition from regional smartphone vendors such as Xiaomi, OPPO and Vivo as these brands grew more aggressive in global markets. In 2020, Apple and Xiaomi were the only two smartphone vendors of the top five ranking to experience growth.
Huawei recorded the highest decline among the top five smartphone vendors which made it lose the No. 2 position to Apple in 2020 (see Table 2). The impact of the ban on use of Google applications on Huawei's smartphones was detrimental to Huawei's performance in the year and negatively affected sales.
21 Comments on Gartner Says Worldwide Smartphone Sales Declined 5% in Fourth Quarter of 2020
Lovely innovation...
On the other hand Exynos 2100 is still a failure. Samsung might as well use all their fab for other chips, like Ampere :D
At the same time, the supposed benefit of 5G is.... nonexistant. 4G does just fine for 99% of all purposes.
The S20 line had those and 5G mmWave and they sold them just fine. Or are you suggesting the technology went backwards and radios somehow got more expensive ?
I need to change my phone and this might be the year I try an iPhone, they're all the same now in terms of value, no real advantages to either.
I don't need 5g, I only need more space, this 1tb on the phone is perfect.
I still have my S8....stupid ass Bixby button on it....worthless software. Anyway. I like the phone, but I hate the Samsung Bixby software on it. My phone is still doing good, holds a decent battery charge on it still.
We only replace our phones when they stop working correctly. Last phones we had were HTC DNA - decent phones, but at a constant with no SIM card detected. Had to constantly pull out the SIM and put it back in to resolve the message. Otherwise worked fairly well. Wife's crapped out first - probably bad memory, phone became really slow and at times non-responsive. About 8 months later mine finally failed - internal speaker failure. I could hear folks when they called, but I couldn't call out because no one could hear me.
I don't understand people that constantly upgrade to a newer phone when the one they have works just fine. Seems like such a waste when the newer phones really don't have anything new to offer other than maybe a camera that has .5 megapixel improvement over the last iteration that came out 8 months prior.
More ram, more powerful energy efficient CPU, slightly bigger screen, bigger/fresher battery etc etc
My mate 9 cost me $400 back in the day, This Note 9 Pro costs about half that on promo. I probably could have gone with an even cheaper handset too and saved more money as im not really demanding when it comes to what i use my phone for. All of my gaming is reserved for when i get home so i didnt need a high refresh rate screen.
My mate 9 was plenty good though, and it was still good if the the battery didnt start losing 15-20% of its charge every night. Now i have battery life that lasts 3 days between charges and still holds a good amount of charge even at 25% battery life (I normally charge when the battery hits between 30-35% so i could have easily stretched it out for a 4th day)
No 5g on it either but im not super fussed about that. 4g is good when my network isnt throttling. Surf the net, watch youtube occasionally, listen to music, whatsapp/hangouts, make and receive a phone call once in a blue moon and thats all i need a phone to do.
The non-premium feel is a bitter pill to swallow though. It definitely feels like a cheap handset.