NOMADIC LIFESTYLE PART 1
NOMADIC LIFESTYLE PART 1 Everything is Going Nomadic Once just telco, now firmly considered “CE” Headband 29% Within the Headband segment a strong shift from wired to Bluetooth models is visible which currently account for 29 percent of the Headband sales value. 21% Headphones and Mobile Stereo Headsets with Active Noise Cancelling function show an increase in popularity and now generate 21 percent of the sales value of the Headband market. Mobile phones may no longer have the impressive doubledigit growth figures, but the category quickly became one of the three pillars of consumer electronics. The other two are the TV and PC but mobile business (not just smartphones but the ecosystem and spinoffs) brings in the most new business to retailers. For example, the new growth seen in wearables and AR/VR… Global sales of smartphones to end-users totaled 349m units in the first quarter of 2016, a 3.9% increase from 2015, according to Gartner. Smartphone sales represented 78% of total mobile phone sales in the first quarter of 2016 -- which means somewhere people are still buying are plain mobiles (22%). For this year and next, Gartner lists the top 10 technologies and capabilities for smartphones as: Fast charging Wireless charging Augmented and virtual reality Multiple-lens camera solutions Sensors: Biometric authentication and technologies Virtual personal assistants (VPAs) Flexible/curved displays Wi-Fi 802.11 standards USB Type-C Embedded SIM (e-SIM) These capabilities will ensure the smartphone users look to upgrade in the next couple of years. THE YEAR OF AR/VR Apple reports the new AR gaming app Pokémon GO set an App Store record with more downloads in its first week than any other app in history. In history! Available for Android as well as iOS, Pokémon GO topped 50 million downloads on the Google Play Store in record time. Between iOS and Android, the Nintendo gaming app reached 75 million downloads in 19 days. Besides the fact Nintendo is bringing out hardware accessories, the reason this app is important to dealers is the enormous amount of consumers now introduced to AR. You can expect more apps and games for smartphones, plus appropriate accessories. It also will accelerate sales of VR headsets. Gartner projects sales of around 1.4 Million headsets this year alone – a 10X increase over the 140,000 odd units sold last year. By 2017, that will be 6.3 million units. You know the pioneers: Facebook’s OculusRift, HTC Vive, Zeiss VR One Plus, Samsung Gear VR, Razer OSVR (more for developers), Google Cardboard, Microsoft HoloLens… But you probably didn’t realise by next year there will be almost 100 brands – you can already see news of models from Sony, Asus and Xiaomi GLOBAL SMARTPHONES SALES GROWTH DRIVEN BY CHINA Smartphones sales 1Q 2015 vs. 1Q 2016 Units sold (in mil.) Sales value (in bn. US$) 1Q15 1Q16 Y/Y percent 1Q15 1Q16 Y/Y percent change change Western Europe 31.8 30.0 -6% 12.5 11.9 -5% Central & Eastern Europe 16.9 17.1 +1% 3.4 3.5 +3% North America 43.5 45.4 +4% 17.3 18.1 +5% Latin America 27.9 24.8 -11% 7.3 6.5 -11% Middle East & Africa 39.9 42.0 +5% 11.1 10.4 -6% China 92.0 109.2 +19% 27.3 32.1 +18% Developed APAC 19.5 18.7 -4% 11.4 10.9 -4% Emerging APAC 47.8 50.0 +5% 8.2 7.9 -4% GLOBAL 319.3 337.2 +6% 98.5 101.3 +3%€ Source GfK Point of Sales (POS) Measurementdata in 90+ markets, May 2016 www.ifa-international.org IFA International • Friday 2 nd September 2016 45
