Seller: Smartphone sales in Russia rise 17% to 386 bln rbl in 2017

MOSCOW, Jan 12 (PRIME) -- Sales of smartphones in Russia increased 17.3% in 2017 to 386 billion rubles, or up 6% in natural terms to 28.4 million devices, mobile operator and handset retailer MTS said on Friday.

“These are record figures for the Russian market of gadgets and they exceeded results of 2014 when 27.6 million devices were sold,” MTS said.

The average price grew to 13,600 rubles in 2017 from 12,300 rubles in 2016 and 8,900 rubles in 2014.

“Interest-free installments served the strongest impetus for the whole market, which mainly raised the average smartphone price. Sales were also warmed up by competition between Samsung, Apple, and Huawei, which have almost pushed the other vendors out and become the bestsellers,” MTS said.

Samsung raised its share on the local market in money and in units by 3.5% in 2017 to 29.2% and 25.2%, respectively, thanks to a successful start of sales of the flagship models Galaxy S8 and S8+.

Apple’s iPhone had 34.4% of the market in money, up 0.5 percentage points, and 12.8% in units, up 1.7 percentage points.

Huawei’s market share rose 4.7 percentage points to 8.5% in money and 5.3 percentage points to 9.6% in units.

“Higher dynamics of sales in rubles than in units resulted from growth in demand for gadgets of high price segments,” MTS said.

(56.9957 rubles – U.S. $1)

End