Phone makers look to add-on gizmos to revitalise market

4.4% decline in iPhone sales, according to Gartner

Phone buyers looking for innovation at next week’s big industry show in Barcelona will need to look beyond the handsets themselves to additional gadgets like 360-degree cameras which can be hooked up to their computing power, as manufacturers struggle to differentiate their core products.

The need to invent has never been greater as phone buyers are less keen to buy devices only marginally better than the ones they already own, leaving manufacturers struggling to eclipse rivals with only faster processors, higher resolution screens or better cameras - all at ever lower prices.

And yet the annual Mobile World Congress industry gathering in Barcelona is expected to have little new to show other than dozens of handsets with coloured metallic cases and outsized screens, all largely indistinguishable from last year’s models.

Only two of the top five vendors, Samsung and Huawei, increased sales to end-users in the last quarter, while Apple suffered its first quarterly decline, with iPhone sales down 4.4 per cent, according to market research firm Gartner.

Apple, which gave birth to the smartphone industry in 2007, on the eve of the financial crisis, still rakes in the lion’s share of the profits, distinguished in part by its vibrant software apps market and exclusive ecosystem of connected services.

But for Apple and its main rivals western markets are now saturated. And the growth engine of China, where the market more than doubled in size each year from 2001 to 2013, is stalling, with forecast growth of only onetwo per cent in 2016.