17:20 - 23.02.2018

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February 23, Fineko/abc.az. The smartphone market has experienced its first decline in history.

Website 3DNews.ru with reference to Gartner’s analysts says that a total of 408 million smartphones were sold in the 4th quarter of 2017 that is by 5.6% less than a year earlier.

"Before, the market had always grown — at least for the time of observation over it by Gartner in 2004," 3DNews.ru says.

Research director Anshul Gupta called two main causes because of which smartphone sales have decreased. First, according to the expert, users of usual push-button cell phones started transferring less to smartphones because of the lack of ultra-cheap, but high-quality devices, so many of those people prefer to buy more advanced mobile phones without full operating systems.

The second negative factor is that the smartphone owners are in no hurry to update their cell phones, waiting for release of the most high-end models. People want to see in the new cell phone the really new features that there were not in the old device, but such a leap in technology is not yet happening.

Gartner says that Samsung has remained the leader of the global smartphone market with a share of 18.2% in the last 3 months of 2017. Top 3 also included Apple (17.9 %) and Huawei (10.8%). More information about the balance of power among manufacturers can be found in the table below.