Australian smartphone sales decline over second quarter of 2019

The current rate of smartphone sale decline is keeping in line with Gartner's forecast of overall smartphone sale decline over 2019.

Global research and advisory firm Gartner has revealed Australian smartphone sales have declined by seven per cent over the second quarter of 2019 to just over two million unit sales.

Australia’s smartphone sales have continued to outpace the global rate of decline of 1.7 per cent, totalling 368 million units. 

“Demand for high-end smartphones has slowed at a greater rate than demand for mid-range and low-end smartphones,” said Anshul Gupta, senior research director at Gartner.

“To try to boost smartphone replacements, we’ve seen manufacturers bringing premium features such as multi-lens front/back cameras, bezel-less displays and large batteries from their flagship smartphones into lower-priced models,” Gupta said

Gartner data revealed Apple was ranked first for Australian market share at 37 per cent with 746,000 unit sales, then Samsung at 24 per cent with 485,000 unit sales, Huawei at 19 per cent with 384,000 unit sales followed by Oppo at 9.5 per cent with 191,000 unit sales.

In comparison, Samsung was number one for international market share at 20.4 per cent with 75 million units. Gupta claimed the vendor’s success was rooted in its Galaxy A series smartphones and the overhaul of its entry- and mid-range smartphones.

“Demand for Samsung’s flagship Galaxy S10 started to weaken during the quarter, however, indicating that achieving growth in 2019 as a whole will be a challenge,” he said.

This was followed by Huawei at 15.8 per cent with 58 million unit sales, Apple at 10.5 per cent with 38 million unit sales, Xiaomi at nine per cent with 33 million unit sales and Oppo at 7.6 per cent with 28 million unit sales.

Huawei experienced the highest year-over-year growth for another quarter out of the top performing vendors, with sales increasing by 16.5 per cent over the quarter. This growth was driven by sales for the quarter increasing across Greater China by 31 per cent.

These figures however are less than Huawei first quarter’s results, which saw global sales increase by 44.5 per cent and Greater China sales increase by 33 per cent.

Gartner’s smartphone sales data has so far remained consistent with their forecast of global smartphone sale declines over the course of 2019.