Surge in refurbished smartphones killing market shares of iPhones, Samsung, others
Contrary to speculations that stiff competition for market shares by leading smartphone manufacturers are responsible for average drop in sales reports by all the key market leaders, new report by Business Hilights Intelligence Unit (BHIU), a wholly independent research arm of the Business Hilights Publications, has revealed that the market is squeezed by unprecedented influx of refurbished smartphones from mainly United Kingdom and parts of Europe.
In Nigeria, yesterday, US manufacturing giant, Apple and owners of iPhone brand of smartphones, unveiled its latest technology designed to provide best colour and other qualities, the iPhone X and iPhone XS Max.
Checks across leading smartphone markets in Lagos, Abuja and Port Harcourt by BHIU showed takeover of many shops by display of fairly used London refurbished smartphones instead of well packaged devices from leading smartphone manufacturers.
On why the trend is being sustained, major marketers who shared their experience with our correspondents, averred that the major factor is cost and usability.
One of the dealers in Computer Village, Ikeja who pleaded anonymity said “Nigerians prefer refurbished phones whether feature or smartphones because of their lower prices and ability to offer exactly the services coming with newly shipped smartphones from world known manufacturers.
However, to beat the trend, Samsung Electronics in Nigeria recently sealed a mortgage purchase scheme for their products with MTN Nigeria, Sterling Bank and Technology Distributions (TD) and PayJoy group to allow Nigerians access smartphones with an understanding to complete payments over time while suing the device.
Though checks have not been able to prove the success of the scheme, latest preliminary data from the International Data Corporation (IDC) has shown that global smartphone market has slowed for one straight year with the shipment of Samsung devices suffering a decline in Africa and other markets.
New data from IDC’s Quarterly Mobile Phone Tracker stated that smartphone vendors shipped a total of 355.2 million units during the third quarter of 2018, resulting in a year-over-year decline of six per cent.
IDC noted that this is the fourth consecutive quarter of year-over-year decline for the global smartphone market.
The report noted that Samsung, the largest smartphone vendor in terms of market share, accounting for 20.3 per cent of shipments in the quarter under review, declined 13.4 per cent year-over-year in the quarter.
Also the report hinted that China, which is the largest country market for smartphone consumption, accounting for roughly one-third of global shipments, was down as well for the sixth consecutive quarter.
IDC did not present any data on shipment of refurbished phones as there is no data before now even though the devices flood every phone market in developing economies and Nigeria in particular.
