STAMFORD, Conn.—Gartner is predicting a flat global mobile phone market in 2016.
According to Gartner, smartphone shipments will reach 1.5 billion worldwide this year, up 7% from 2015 but well off the typical double-digit growth the industry has seen.
The total mobile phone market – which includes smartphones as well as basic phones – will increase shipments by 1.94 billion units, about even with last year’s 1.92 billion units, the company said.
"The double-digit growth era for the global smartphone market has come to an end," Ranjit Atwal, research director at Gartner, told totaltele.com.
Gartner said that it expects 2016 smartphone sales in China and North America to be flat in 2016, with growth in these markets at 0.7% and 0.4% respectively.
Gartner cited slowing growth to economic uncertainty and longer handset replacement cycles.
"As carriers' deals become more complex, users are likely to hold onto phones, especially as the technology updates become incremental rather than exponential," Gartner Research Director Annette Zimmerman told the website. "In addition, the volumes of users upgrading from basic phones to premium phones will slow, with more basic phones being replaced with the same type of phone.”
Meanwhile, in emerging markets, Gartner expects many consumers to delay upgrading from feature phones to low-end smartphones until the functionality and price of the latter becomes more desirable. Gartner expects annual global mobile phone shipments to rise to 1.98 billion in 2017, and 2.02 billion 2018.