The global smartphone market is shrinking – Who are first in Europe?  

Have we reached the bottom of the barrel?

The global smartphone market seems to be going through a crisis , since only 287 million devices reached store shelves in the second quarter of the year, a 9% drop compared to last year. Samsung remains at the top, while Apple managed to wrest second place from Xiaomi, as Chinese companies struggle to cope with reduced demand.

In Europe, things are worse , as the first quarter of the year was the worst since 2013 and the second quarter saw the market decline by a further 13%, shipping just 40.3 million devices to stores.

The first quarter of 2021 was Samsung’s worst in a decade, which makes this quarter’s year-over-year rise less impressive. The same is true for Apple, while the exact opposite happened with Xiaomi, which had an impressive rise in the second quarter of 2021, only to decline this year.

The situation in Europe is unfortunately bad. Many countries are approaching recession and domestic political tensions in many countries beyond Russia and Ukraine continue to rise, for example in France, Germany and the United Kingdom. However, we remain optimistic that we have reached the bottom of the barrel and the path will be upward from here on, but it will probably be slow.