FOCUS: Tech-thirsty Russians push smartphone sales above 315 bln rbl in Jan–Sep

By Yekaterina Yezhova

MOSCOW, Oct 15 (PRIME) -- A growing interest of Russians to sophisticated and large smartphones with a heavy price tag propelled sales by 22–23% on the year to more than 315 billion rubles in January–September and the trend will remain, top local retailers said. Apple and Samsung still dominate in money terms, while Chinese manufacturers have gained almost half of the market in units.

Smartphone sales jumped 22% to 315 billion rubles, while in natural terms, sales added only 3% to 21 million, M.Video-Eldorado Group said in a research. The figures of combined company Svyaznoy-Euroset are close: sales rocketed 23% to more than 317 billion rubles and 2% to 21 million devices.

“The spike in monetary terms is explained by the fact that demand has moved toward more expensive and multi-functional gadgets with wider screens this year. In January–September, 19% of Russian buyers preferred smartphones with a price tag of more than 20,000 rubles as compared to 15% in the same period of 2017,” Sergei Belozyorov, director for strategic planning and analysis at Svyaznoy-Euroset, told PRIME.

“The main trend of 2018 is a significant growth of interest to devices with wider screens. The share of devices with displays larger than 5.5 inches reached 37% and we think it will only rise further.”

M.Video-Eldorado Group said demand is gravitating toward medium and upper medium segments. Sales of smartphones with a price of 10,000–20,000 rubles and more than 40,000 rubles increased 36% on the year in units.

The average price added 20% to 15,200­­­­–15,300 rubles, the retailers said.

“The dynamics are explained by appearance of more expensive models on the market thanks to evolution of new smart technologies in gadgets. Smartphone manufacturers started making more models with double or triple cameras, NFC, face recognition and other options,” Belozyorov at Svyaznoy-Euroset said.

M.Video-Eldorado Group said people prefer smartphones with near-field communication (NFC) amid expansion of contactless payment, and the market share of NFC-embedded smartphones increased 10 percentage points to almost 40%.

NFC enables two electronic devices, one of which is usually a portable device such as a smartphone, to establish communication by bringing them close to each other.

Smartphones running on Android had a 66% share of the January–September sales in money, and iOS had 34%. In units, 87% of buyers opted for Android and 13% for iOS devices, Belozyorov at Svyaznoy-Euroset said.

Top names

“In fact, the market is now dominated by a strong pack of three main players: Apple, South Korea’s Samsung, and China’s Huawei/Honor, which account for 60% of sales in units in January–September with the others sharing the remaining 40%,” M.Video-Eldorado Group said.

“In the second pack, apart from Xiaomi and Finland’s Nokia, we should note Russia’s BQ-mobile and Vertex. They’ve managed to keep their position on the competitive market and join the top 10 most popular brands in January–September.”

According to Svyaznoy-Euroset, Apple smartphones accounted for 34% of sales in money in January–September, and Samsung followed with 27% and Huawei/Honor for 19%.

In units, Samsung led with a 24% share in sales in January–September, Huawei/Honor followed with 23% with an impressive growth by 2.5 times on the year. Apple had 13%.

The bestsellers were the iPhone SE 32GB NFC LTE, Samsung Galaxy J1 2016 8GB J120F Dual LTE, Honor 9 LITE 32GB Dual NFC LTE, Samsung Galaxy A5 2017 32GB Dual NFC LTE, and Samsung Galaxy J3 2016 J320F Dual LTE, according to Svyaznoy-Euroset.

Chinese expansion

“The speed at which Chinese manufacturers occupy the Russian smartphone market never fail to fascinate. In essence, Chinese manufacturers have taught Russian buyers to be guided not only by a brand when choosing a smartphone, but by options and the price,” said Vladimir Chaika, head of the mobile devices department at M.Video-Eldorado Group.

In units, sales of smartphones by Chinese vendors – comprising mainly Huawei/Honor, Xiaomi, ZTÅ, Meizu, Oppo, Vivo – were above 40% in January–September as compared to 30% in the same period of 2017, according to M.Video-Eldorado Group.

Belozyorov at Svyaznoy-Euroset said the market share of Chinese manufacturers expanded tremendously in January–September: it reached 30% in money and 37% in units as compared to 22% and 28% respectively last year.

(65.9751 rubles – U.S. $1)

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