Customs duties: Counterpoint halves growth forecast for smartphone market
The global smartphone market is likely to grow much more slowly in 2025 than originally assumed. The new US tariffs are to blame.
Tariffs increase costs, Apple passes them on to customers. This slows down sales.
(Image: Sebastian Trepesch)
US President Donald Trump's Dadaist tariff policy is hitting the smartphone market hard. The market researchers at Counterpoint have been forced to adjust their forecast for the current year. Instead of 4.2 percent, global sales in terms of units are expected to grow by just 1.9 percent. This is a reduction of 55% on the original growth forecast. Counterpoint now even expects sales figures to fall in North America. Three percent fewer smartphones are expected to be sold there in 2025 than in 2024.
Demand in Europe and parts of Asia is also weaker than previously assumed. The Chinese market is not expected to grow at all this year, according to the new forecast. Government subsidies are currently in place there to boost domestic sales. However, this program is not having the effect originally expected by market researchers. Even an extension of the subsidies to particularly expensive devices, which has already taken place, is unlikely to help the Chinese market to grow.
However, the market will grow in all regions of the world other than North America and China in 2025, which should result in an overall increase of 1.9%. Africa and the Middle East will be the growth leaders, with Counterpoint predicting a six percent increase in smartphone sales.
Redmi makes it into the top 10
Broken down by manufacturer, Counterpoint unsurprisingly sees lower growth for the market leaders Apple and Samsung in particular. However, the market researchers have raised their forecast for Huawei to eleven percent growth. The Chinese market leader has reduced the bottlenecks in its supply chain (also caused by US sanctions) and is benefiting from the use of self-developed processors.
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According to Counterpoint, the world's best-selling smartphone in the first quarter of 2025 was the iPhone 16. The best-selling Android smartphone was the A16 5G from Samsung. The only non-Samsung or non-Apple model in Counterpoint's top 10 was the Redmi 14C 4G. There was no third brand in the top 10 in the first quarter of 2024.
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