Smartphone sales in Taiwan grew 2.7 percent year-on-year to 1.38 million units in the first quarter of this year, marking the first annual increase over the past five years, International Data Corp (IDC) said yesterday, attributing it to demand for high-end 5G-enabled smartphones.
Average selling prices also increased 14.8 percent year-on-year in the first quarter due to a chip shortage and robust demand, it said.
“People prioritized the purchase of laptops and other related equipment over upgrading smartphones” during the early stage of the COVID-19 pandemic, IDC associate research director Joey Yen (嚴蘭欣) said in a press release.
Photo courtesy of Sony Mobile Communication International Taiwan Branch
“As such, even though 5G services commenced in mid-2020 in Taiwan, it was not until the first quarter of 2021 that we saw year-on-year growth in smartphone sales,” she said.
Robust demand for Apple Inc’s 5G smartphone drove the year-on-year growth in smartphone sales during the first three months of this year.
Sales of iPhones grew 22.4 percent year-on-year in the quarter, lifting Apple’s market share in Taiwan from 34.3 percent to 40.9 percent, it said.
South Korea’s Samsung Electronics Co ranked second, with a market share of 26.5 percent, followed by China’s Oppo Mobile Telecommunications Corp (歐珀) at 8 percent, Vivo Communication Technology Co (維沃) at 6.9 percent and Xiaomi Corp (小米) at 6.2 percent, IDC data showed.
Xiaomi handset sales included those sold under the Xiaomi, Hongmi and Pocophone brands, IDC said.
Overall, the top five brands took up 88.5 percent of the local market in the first quarter, it said.
“Taiwan’s handset market is now increasingly dominated by the large players,” IDC said.
Taiwan’s smartphone market has been slowing since 2016, but Yen forecast that local sales this year would see year-on-year growth for the first time in six years.
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