Samsung’s growth was nearly triple compared with the overall electronics-IT market, which only grew 3.7% on the year in 2019. Due to the COVID-19, the Romanian electronics-IT market is expected to decline as much as 30-50% in 2020, after seven years of growth. Samsung officials said the impact of the crisis was limited due to the strength of the brand.
The company’s net profit grew by 45% in 2019, to RON155.6 million.
Samsung has around 140 employees in Romania.
Samsung had its best year ever on the smartphone market in Romania in 2019, as its market share reached about 54% by volume, 6% higher than in 2018, even though the overall smartphone market remained at a similar level.
Samsung had already been the market leader for seven or eight years but had never seen an average market share of more than 50%. It reached this milestone after accounting for more than half of the sales on the market in 11 of the 12 months of last year and in September even delivered almost 60% of the smartphones purchased in Romania.
The top three brands on the market, Samsung, Huawei and Apple accounted for more than 83% of the sales of smartphones in 2019, compared with some 75% in 2018.
The local smartphone market had grown nearly 20% in 2020 before the coronavirus crisis, industry sources told Ziarul Financiar. In March and April, when Romania was in lockdown, sales dropped 30%, they said. The electronics and household appliances market had a similar evolution, with growth at the beginning of the year, followed by sudden decline after the onset of the health crisis.