Smartphones take a hammering, feature phones make a comeback

Smartphones in the Europe, Middle East and Africa are coming under pressure as sales slip for a second year.

Surprisingly, the shipments of feature phones jumped in 2017, industry research organisation, the International Data Corporation (IDC) has found.

According the IDC, smartphones were down at 361 million, a marginal decrease compared to 374 million in 2016, but feature phones jumped 8.7% to 206 million over the same period.

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The cost of smartphones is having an impact on sales, says the IDC.

"Looking at the European market of the European Union, Norway, and Switzerland, consumers are spending more money on phones even as they buy them less frequently. This is true of countries in both Western and Central Europe," said Simon Baker, programme director of mobile phone research in IDC CEMA.

Apple

The standout performer in the smartphone market was Apple which recently launched the iPhone X.

The IDC said the iPhone added $4.3bn in sales in the European market in particular, and in EMEA, sales rose a whopping 37.5%, on sales of 57 million iPhones.

Apple may also receive a further boost as customers upgrade to its latest devices.

GBH Insights in March said that over the next year to 18 months, Apple may benefit from 350 million customers upgrading to its newer iPhones, driving revenue.

Huawei challenge to Samsung's de facto position as the top Android platform faltered somewhat in 2017, said the IDC.

"Samsung continued to dominate Android sales in EMEA and in 2017 held on to a two-fifth share, while Huawei's challenge slowed, with the Android share only slightly above that of the previous year at 13.4%.

"The relaunch of the Nokia brand by HMD saw it reestablish itself in many of the countries of old Nokia strength; over half of its global smartphone sales were within EMEA," said the IDC.

High end device sales (ie devices over $700) were up by 20% over 2016 numbers.

IDC data showed that the market for entry level smartphones in Africa is flat, hurting brands like Alcatel and Lenovo.

Feature phones in Africa are showing resurgence and in Europe, they are falling more slowly than in previous years.

This table shows the global smartphone market by vendor: