According to the Worldwide Quarterly Mobile Phone Tracker published by International Data Corporation (IDC), 249,397 smartphones were sold in Serbia in the first quarter of 2016, down 1.5% from the 253,307 units sold in Q1 2015. The market was characterized by postponed deliveries and a decrease in smartphone sales due to vendors’ hesitation to define prices.
Smartphones represented 78.1% of total shipments in the country and continue to take share from feature phones; in the same quarter of 2015, the segment’s share was 75.6%. Serbia lags behind Western Europe in terms of smartphone penetration, but not by much – smartphones constituted about 88% of all handsets sold in Western Europe in 2015.
Despite numerous new devices being announced and shipped, OS rankings remained largely unchanged from a year ago. Nevertheless, the success of midrange handsets from Lenovo and Huawei helped strengthen Android’s dominant position, as its share increased to 88.8% in Q1 2016, up from 81.8% a year earlier. Entry-level devices and those in the lower midrange contributed most to Android’s growth.
Still-leading brand Samsung is being challenged by new models from Chinese vendors such as Lenovo and Huawei; the latter’s unit share increased by 4.7% quarter on quarter in the smartphone product category. “Huawei works closely with local operators Telenor and VIP, which has helped it increase brand awareness and device availability,” says Zorana Juric, research manager, Adriatics, with IDC Serbia. “Meanwhile, Lenovo has been very active with promotions, and the brand is widely considered good value for money.”
Shipments of fourth-generation LTE handsets increased 64.4 % year on year, almost doubling in terms of total smartphone market share to 49.5%. The shift to 4G is coming with big investments by operators in network coverage. “Telenor will invest an extra EUR 40 million in network development,” says Juric, “which will enable 4G Internet access for 50% of the population of Serbia.”
Source; Cellular News
