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International Data Corporation (IDC), an IT and telecommunications market research firm, said on its website Oct. 29 that smartphone shipments fell just 1.3 percent in the third quarter, a much smaller decline than what expected. Explaining that the first wave of the epidemic explains the increase in demand, IDC previously predicted a 9 percent decline for this quarter. A total of 353.6 million smartphones were shipped worldwide in the third quarter.
Demand grew faster than expected in developing countries like India, where the smartphone market is the second largest in the world. Nabila Popal, research director of IDC’s Mobile Phone Monitoring Group, said that distance education introduced in India due to the coronavirus has increased the demand for smartphones as they are cheaper to obtain than a tablet or computer.
Much more developed markets, such as Western Europe, North America and China, posted the biggest declines in the third quarter. As these are Apple’s largest markets, the month-long delay in launching the iPhone 12 also contributed to the contraction.
Samsung in South Korea sold the most 80.4 million smartphones in the third quarter, followed by two Chinese companies in second and third place: Huawei and Xiaomi. Huawei is affected by the US sanctions, so its sales could fall by 22 percent. Xiaomi’s sales, on the other hand, rose 42 percent, ahead of the United States’ Apple for the first time, whose smartphone sales fell 10.6 percent.
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