Research firm IDC has been putting out its latest numbers on smartphone shipments around the world, including China and India – both countries of considerable interest to the music industry in 2019, with smartphone growth an important factor.
In China, IDC says that shipments were down 9.7% year-on-year in the fourth quarter of 2018 – but that still meant 103m units. Apple and Xiaomi both saw their shipments fall sharply, but Huawei saw its grow by 23.3% – another reason to follow its music strategy closely.
In India, there’s a more positive overall-growth story, with shipments growing by 19.5% year-on-year to 36.3m units in the fourth quarter – and a rise of 14.5% to 142.3m units for 2018 as a whole. IDC’s table of market share (for 2018 as a whole) makes for interesting reading if you’re thinking about trends in India: Xiaomi accounted for 28.9% of all shipments in India last year, ahead of Samsung (22.4%), Vivo (10%), Oppo (7.2%) and Transsion (4.5%).
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