After a decade of growth, the global smartphone market came to a standstill in 2017. According to latest estimates by market research firm IDC, there won’t be much movement in any direction this year either. IDC expects global smartphone shipments to amount to 1.46 billion devices this year, virtually unchanged from last year’s total.

Attributing the temporary slowdown to a market downturn in China, IDC expects the global market to return to modest growth in 2019 though before the introduction of 5G devices will drive further growth until 2022. IDC expects the first 5G smartphones to arrive in late 2019 and projects 5G devices to reach a market share of 7 percent in 2020 and 18 percent of global shipments by 2022.

source: statista