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THE SMARTPHONE market is expected to grow at a slower rate in 2015, despite upcoming launches of flagship devices.
TrendForce has revised its growth forecast for smartphones across 2015, down from 11.6 percent to 8.2 percent, citing negative global economic outlook for the second half of the year, and weakening demands. This is in marked contrast with the 26.5 percent growth of 2014.
Within the industry, smartphone shipments in the second quarter of 2015 grew 1.9 percent over the previous quarter to 304M units, though TrendForce expects a slowdown as vendors prepare to launch their flagship devices later in the year.
One area of growth is in branded Chinese smartphones, which got a boost from Chinese Labor Day sales, as well as their entry into the international market. In the second quarter of 2015, Chinese branded smartphones had an above global average growth of 15.6% with 126M units shipped. Leading the way is Huawei, which has projected shipments of 100M in 2015, and Xiami which his ranked fourth in the global market for shipments.
In terms of brand, Samsung continues to lead global smartphone shipments, with 26 percent of the global market share in the second quarter. However, it is under threat from the Chinese phone makers. The success of the Galaxy Note 5, with its upgraded specs and new features will be critical for Samsung.
Apple is expected to continue with its high sales, off the back of the iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus. The next-generation iPhone due to be launched this year should have no major changes in appearance, although it will run on a new A9 processor and 2GB LPDDR4 of memory.
These improvements along with the Force Touch module and a camera featuring a possible resolution of 12MP will give the next iPhone a huge boost. TrendForce is predicting high growth of 15 percent and up for iPhones in 2015.