Counterpoint: COVID-19 affects Q1 smartphone sales in Europe

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According to European market research done by Counterpoint, COVID-19 has caused 7% market decline in Q1 2020 compared to Q1 2019 and about 23% decline compared to the last quarter. Western Europe took the bigger hit with 9% on average while Easter Europe experienced about 5% fall.


The pandemic has led to lengthening the update cycles of the consumers. Italy took the biggest hit with 21% decline compared to last year's Q1. But the pattern across Europe was pretty much the same - online retailers were able to offset the negative impact with more aggressive online sales schemes while the offline stores suffered quite a bit due to store closures. Interesting to note that the Russian market has seen a small 1% decline as it was barely affected by the time the quarter concluded.


As far as manufacturers go, Samsung holds the lead with 29% market share with just 2 percentage points decline while Apple has seen a 1pp increase to 22% market share. Huawei follows but lost a low of ground, while Xiaomi has grown to 11% from just 4% in 2019.

Source