Worldwide smartphone market will stay slow this year but bounce back in 2019, per report

According to IDC’s Worldwide Quarterly Mobile Phone Tracker, the total volume of smartphone shipments across the globe will decrease 0.2 percent in 2018 to 1.462 billion units, failing to improve upon the 1.465 billion units registered the year before and the 1.469 billion units recorded in 2016. In other words, after going through a 0.3 percent decline in 2017, this year is projected to post yet another slide.

But there is hope -- per IDC’s estimation, the global market for smartphone devices should return to growth next year, improving approximately 3 percent every year until 2022, when shipment volume globally will hit 1.654 billion units.

Last year, the most significant contributor to the worldwide decline was China, which is widely considered the number one mobile market right now. The country reported a painful 4.9 percent year over year decrease in 2017, and this year, it will hurt even more, with IDC projecting that the Chinese market will end 2018 with an ever worse 7.1 percent slide. 

However, things should start to look up by 2019, and rapidly emerging mobile markets will do some of the lifting. Not that they haven’t already -- this year, India will grow by a very promising 14 percent and better that showing next year by registering a 16 percent improvement. Quick to the draw, Chinese mobile brands will certainly be looking to pounce, with IDC expecting them to double their efforts in shipping more handsets to Indian consumers, and perhaps even shift away from their homeland. 

And India is in a really nice position to welcome some growth. As pointed out by Ryan Reith, the program vice president of IDC’s Worldwide Quarterly Mobile Phone Tracker, local mobile manufacturing in India continues to grow, even though it still depends extensively on China in getting OEM parts. And this upward trend will likely keep up in the next few years, at least until the first half of the next decade. The thing is that it will not be just India -- IDC expects mobile markets in the Middle East, Africa, and Latin America to also take off in the years to come. 

Of course, the arrival of the 5G era will also help immensely in driving global smartphone market growth. 5G compatible handsets will likely hit store shelves in the second half of next year. By 2020, 7 percent of the worldwide market will be attributed to 5G phones, and by 2022, that share should balloon to 18 percent.