IHS Markit is out with its 2017 data on smartphone shipments. The firms’ numbers are a bit more positive than what we saw yesterday from Strategy Analytics, pointing to a smaller quarterly decline along with a greater increase in year-over-year shipments. The data also puts iPhone in first place with the highest share of holiday quarter smartphone sales.
IHS Markits’ analysis shows 2017 global smartphone shipments dropping 4.5% for Q4 with 387.5 million units. That’s half of the 9% decrease that Strategy Analytics believes happened in the holiday quarter. IHS also believes that Xiaomi and Motorola were the only two manufacturers to see shipment grown for Q4.
For the year, IHS says that global smartphone growth came in at 3.1% with 1.44 billion units compared to 1.4 billion from 2016.
The analyst note says Apple took the greatest share of smartphone sales for Q4 (Apple’s Q1 2018) with 20%, just beating out Samsung’s 19%. Of note, Samsung shipments dropped 4% from the previous quarter, pointing to the strong influence of iPhone during the holidays.
As we reported yesterday, Apple posted higher than expected revenue with $88.3 for its holiday quarter, but was a bit shy of its forecast for iPhone shipments. However, IHS notes that the increased iPhone ASP of $796 (compared to $695 for 2016) thanks to the iPhone X helped balance the company’s performance.
