Smartphone sales in Romania already reached the 3-million-unit threshold in January-October, three times more than in same time of 2013 and over five times more than in the same time in 2008, telecom industry sources told ZF.
The number of smartphones shipped rose by less than 10%. The average price of a smartphone reached RON1,000 in the first ten months of 2018, compared with about RON800 in 2017.
If more than 1 million smartphones and more than 200,000 feature phones are sold in November and December, and the preference for more expensive handsets remains unchanged, the market will go beyond RON4.2 billion (EUR900 million) and could come close to RON4.6 billion (EUR1 billion).
The smartphone market is no longer seeing uniform growth, by volume and value, and in some months the volume actually goes down compared with the corresponding period of the previous year.
“The first quarter was very good for the smartphone market, with rises in shipments by more than 20% on average, after which there was a sudden drop in the number of units shipped and decline in some months. September and October saw a decline in the number of units shipped,” an industry source told ZF.
The highest sales were recorded in January and October, the sources said.
The smartphone sales volume was over five times higher in January-October than a decade ago, while the sales value was almost 40 times higher, the sources told ZF.
Sales of feature phones stood at fewer than one million units, up several percent on 2017, and they were also up in value.
The main beneficiaries of the rise in sales value on the Romanian smartphone market are Samsung, Apple and Huawei, which account for almost 90% of the phone spending by Romanian consumers.
(English version by Loredana Fratila-Cristescu)