The EMEA mobile phone market continues to drop, IDC records, with Q2 2018 smartphone shipments reching 44.9 million, "marginally lower" than the same quarter last year.
The core EU market sees the strongest declines, with most W. European countries seeing lower smartphone values than the same quarter of 2017. That said the picture is mixed, as France and Italy show an increase while C. Europe continues to trend towards more expensive models, leading to an increase in market value in every country. However, overall EU ASPs are down by over -10% Y-o-Y, reversing the recent trend towards more expensive models.
MEA also shows signs of price weakness, with flat smartphone volumes at 38.4m and an ASP of $212, "substantially" lower than the $242 of Q1 2018. The region sees a slowdown in the traditionally "very substantial" feature phone market, and currently the feature phone/smartphone market market split is at almost half and half.
Huawei has a very good Q2 2018 in Europe thanks to the P20 series-- so much so it is head to head with the Samsung Galaxy S9. The P20 Pro sells at a similar price to the S9, while the lower-priced Lite version sells at half of the sum. Also finding success in Europe is Xiaomi, as the Chinese company is moving fast into W. Europe following an initial launch in Poland and Russia. Xiaomi sold x6 the amount of phones in the EU in Q2 2018 as it did in Q2 2017, with ASPs much lower than the market average.
The European market does have one bright spot in customers wanting phones with wider displays. A reflection of how smartphones are increasingly used for media consumption, devices with 18:9 and 18:5:9 displays are increasingly popular, as are the wider, narrower screens up to 19:5:9 seen in some models. As such, one can assume what was previously known as "phablets" are back in fashion, at least in narrower incarnations such as the Samsung Note 9.
IDC predicts the Android smartphone market will see a "rapid transition" into wider form factors, a trend hitting both premium and regular-priced models.
Go Smartphone Sales Slacken in EMEA, But Vendors Take a Wider Aspect View, says IDC
