Apple has taken advantage of a shrinking Australian smartphone market to increase its share to close to 50 percent. Although this doesn’t represent a huge gain year on year, the combination of increased interest in Apple’s iPhone 7 and the contraction of the overall market meant it saw a more than six percent increase in its market share.
This information comes out of the latest report from market intelligence firm IDC, which highlights how Australian consumers purchased just 2.06 million phones throughout the last quarter, representing an 8.2 percent decline in overall sales. This is the sixth consecutive quarter that the market has contracted, suggesting long-term stagnation in the field.
Still, Apple made good during that same period. Increasing its own personal sales in the region by 1.23 percent allowed Apple to take over a further few percent points to control as much as 46.42 percent of the market for the end of the third quarter.
It’s generally believed that at this point the Australian smartphone market has reached a point of saturation, where enough people have devices that cater to their needs and the incremental yearly upgrades offered are not inspiring purchases. As Zdnet reports, Samsung experienced a near seven percent drop in its market share for the quarter — though the vast issues related to the Galaxy Note 7 can be partially blamed for that.
It does however still hold the second most dominant position in the Australian market, followed by Alcatel, ZTE, and Huawei respectively.
The biggest growth sectors are thought to be in low to middle-tier devices, which can be more easily purchased outright and still have many of the features of the higher-end models. As consumers start to drift away from regularly upgrading their flagship devices, they appear to be moving toward lower-cost devices which will have lower recurring fees.
The no-contract market has risen more than 15 percent in the last year and that trend is expected to continue. It may be that as it does, brands like Apple and Samsung fail to remain the market leaders they are today.
