WEAK PERFORMANCE IN THE SMARTPHONE SECTOR

SMARTPHONE revenues grew 3.9 percent year-on-year in the second quarter of 2019 and unit sales dropped 4.9 percent to just under 3 million units in the same time frame, continuing the same trend seen in the previous two quarters. That’s according to newly released point of sale tracking data from GfK South Africa’s Weekly Monitor, which indicates that the consumer technical goods market as a whole grew at around 1.3 percent compared to the same quarter in 2018. The major domestic application and consumer electronics segments both performed well in the quarter, with yearon-year revenue growth of 5.2 percent and 6.7 percent, respectively. However, revenue contractions of 7.6 percent in office equipment and 7.1 percent in consumer IT contributed to a quarter of weak growth for the technical goods market. Kali Moahloli, the head of sales and retail, GfK South Africa, said: “We have seen relatively weak performance in the smartphone sector for three consecutive quarters, reflecting both market saturation and a difficult economic climate.” | Staff Reporter