Mobile phone sales are finally growing: good October data leaves behind 27 consecutive months of declines

The mobile industry has gone through a very difficult time in the last 2 and a half years but, finally, the sector has received the news it has been longing for for a long time: the return to sales growth.

International mobile phone sales during increased 5% year-on-year during the month of Octoberaccording to data just published by analyst Counterpoint Research.

It would not be a particularly relevant data if it were not for the context from which the market comes, since October was the first month of growth after a period with 27 consecutive months of year-on-year declines in global sales.

Before October 2023, to find a month in which more smartphones would have been sold in the world than the same period of the previous year, you have to go back until June 2021when the boom sales of technological devices caused by the COVID-19 pandemic.

Since then, many things have affected the mobile market, which at one time was the one experiencing the best moment of all devices, but which ended up being one of the most punished by sales data.

At the end of 2021, the industry was still affected by the shortage of components such as semiconductors, which did not fully clear up until 2022. Last year, inflation triggered by the war in Ukraine and uncertainty in the macroeconomy were another factor that negatively affected sales, something that did not even manage to reverse the good performance of the iPhone 14 series.

Another aspect that analysts highlight is that the purchasing habits of the users themselves have changed, since each time mobile phones are used for a longer time before changing them: A few years ago the average was less than 2 years per mobile but today the durability has increased to 3 years and more in many cases.

This trend does not catch analysts off guard, who already expected the global smartphone market to return to positive numbers in the fourth quarter of 2023 due to the good signs in the sector.

And this is something that the data for the month of October seem to confirm, which opens a period in which Counterpoint Research itself confirms that it expects the quarter to be an increase in sales for the first time in 2 and a half years internationally.

The increase in sales has little to do with the West

But the good data has nothing to do with the fact that sales are rising in markets like Spain and other markets in Western countries such as the United States and Europebecause in fact the decline in sales continues in these regions.

Those responsible for the fact that October has been the first month of growth after 27 months of collapses are the markets of emerging countries such as those in the Middle East and Africa, the region that is growing the most worldwide and which, in fact, has already had positive numbers for quarters. .

To this we must add other factors such as the rebirth of Huawei in sales, which is especially boosting the mobile market in China, and the October sales season in India, the most important of the year in this Asian giant and which had a performance above expectations.

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To this we must also add that the sales forecasts in Latin America They are also positive and analyst Canalys expects unit growth of 2% during 2023.

“The smartphone sector is clearly emerging from its darkest days, even though shipments remain more than 20% below their 2017 peak.“says Toby Zhu, senior analyst at Canalys.

Apple has also played an important role, as the launch of the iPhone 15 series took place in the last week of September and the effect of the American company’s new flagships is also being felt positively in the international smartphone market. .