NZ mobile handset sales: The end of the golden weather

New Zealand's mobile phone market’s glory days seem to be in the past with IDC Research reporting sales of non-smartphone handsets tanked in the second quarter of 2013. Smartphone sales also dropped.

IDC Research says phone sales across Australia and New Zealand fell five percent when compared with the first quarter. Compared with the same period a year earlier sales were down 20 percent. About 2.6 million handsets were sold in the two countries.

Sales of feature phones, that’s the name the telecommunications industry gives to non-smartphones, plummeted  45 percent when compared with the year earlier.

Smartphone sales slow

Even smartphones, seen as a hot spot, saw a small decline in sales during the period. IDC Research described this as a surprising slowdown in demand.

IDC Research analyst Aman Bajaj says New Zealand accounts for about 12 percent of phone sales across the region. He says: “There was a slowdown in smartphone shipments in the NZ market with shipments falling by just over 10 percent compared to the same period last year.”

Telecom NZ confirmed there was a slow down in smartphone sales during the second quarter. It attributed this to excess stock left over from the first quarter.

Bajaj says feature phones now account for less than one phone in five sold. He says this shows most consumers have now swapped over to smartphones.

But with the bulk of customers now moved to the smartphones, the upgrade boom has come to an end.

Android leads

IDC Research says Google’s Android now leads Apple’s iOS as the most popular phone operating system across ANZ. It has been the leader in New Zealand for some time now. Samsung lead the Android charge, but IDC also mentions Sony, Huawei, LG and HTC.

Android and iOS account for nine out of ten phones sold, the only other operating system to register is Microsoft’s Windows Mobile, which remains a distant third followed by Blackberry.