PH smartphone sales sustained growth for second year in 2024
When Filipinos made their budget last year, they made sure to include a new mobile phone, which has become a necessity in this increasingly digital era.
The latest “Quarterly Mobile Phone Tracker” report by International Data Corp. (IDC) reveals that Filipinos bought more smartphones last year as vendors introduced more entry-level models that are more budget-friendly.
The shipments of local smartphones in the country grew by 6.1 percent to about 18 million units last year. Models priced below $100 accounted for more than half of the volume.
READ: PH mobile commerce seen growing by $11.1B in 2024
Chinese brand Transsion, whose sub-brands include Infinix, Tecno and Itel, sold the most items last year, accounting for 37.3 percent of the market share. This showed a wider footprint from 34.1-percent market share in 2023.
Infinix has models with price tags as low as P4,000.
Realme, another Chinese brand, had the second biggest sale last year with 13.3-percent market share, declining from 15.9 percent in 2023.
Vivo and Xiaomi both ranked third with 11-percent market share. Rounding up the top five was Oppo with 10.1-percent market share.
“While the last quarter slowed down with an annual decline of 11.8 percent due to early launches by vendors in the prior quarter, it still remained the strongest quarter for smartphones with almost 5 million shipments in [fourth quarter of 2024] driven by the holiday season,” IDC Philippines senior market analyst Angela Medez says.
2nd year of growth
IDC notes that the Philippine smartphone market registered a growth for the second consecutive year in 2024.
It was only in 2023 when this segment of the consumer device market showed recovery after two years of decline as consumers had previously tightened their belts amid elevated prices of commodities.
At the time, the consumers were also still coping with the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the economy.
The growth last year was in line with IDC’s expectation of better sales as consumer spending grew, especially during the holiday season.
As Filipinos become more comfortable performing tasks like online purchases and banking via their phones, they have also developed better awareness on potential scams that may victimize them.
A study by mobile security company Appdome says that Filipinos are becoming increasingly receptive to mobile protection.
Amid the onslaught of cyberattacks, 87.5 percent of the respondents are demanding brands to proactively block mobile fraud as a safety measure. Almost all respondents, or about 97.5 percent, also want total mobile protection in mobile apps covering account login and data storage, among others. Some 36.4 percent of the respondents said they had encountered social engineering schemes or text scams.
