Smartphone Sales Grew Almost 10% Last Quarter

JPMorgan’s Rod Hall said that 4Q smartphone sales growth was ahead of their estimate, but marked the slowest growth since 2008. Global smartphone sales came in at 403 million units, up 9.7 percent y/y, according to Gartner.

In 2015, 1.4 billion units of smartphones were sold, an increase of 14.4 percent from 2014. Gartner mentioned that the availability of low-cost smartphones in emerging markets and the strong demand for premium smartphones were the driving factors. Nearly 85 percent of users in the emerging Asia/Pacific markets are replacing their current mid-range phones with the same category of phones.

Samsung, with a market share of 20.7 percent, and Huawei, with a 8 percent market share, were the only two of the top five smartphone vendors to record an increase in their sales to end users. Apple Inc. AAPL, which commands a 17.7 percent market share, witnessed a quarterly decline for the first, down 4.4 percentage points.

Analyst Rod Hall stated that the news has no impact on Apple and QUALCOMM, Inc. QCOM. He added that although the smartphone sell-through growth of 9.7 percent was higher than the JPMorgan estimate of 7.8 percent, the same is likely to slow to 7.9 percent in 2016.

Hall further wrote, “We also note that Apple’s market share decline is immaterial, in our opinion, given most market growth is occurring at price points that Apple does not compete in. We believe Apple likely has continued taking share in the $400+ ASP category.