Tech Devices in 2015: Emerging Markets Dominate Growth, Increasing by $10b

Global market research agency, GfK, has released part of its 2015 forecasts for sales of technology devices, showing that the stable global forecast hides multi-billion dollar changes at country level. 

GfK's technology device forecasts cover 70 different digital device types globally and indicate that the overall market in 2015 will remain at one trillion USD, just as it has been since 2011. However, the 10 largest growth markets will increase by over $10b alone and be dominated by emerging markets. India provides by far the greatest opportunity, primarily driven by sales of smartphones, where both volume and pricing will contribute to an overall technology device growth of nearly five billion US dollars in 2015.

Feature phone markets 

As expected, the global feature phone market continues to decline rapidly, with GfK's forecasts showing sales by volume dropping 20 percent and sales by value dropping 30 percent. However, feature phone vendors in emerging APAC countries and the Middle East & Africa can be slightly happier, with forecasted markets size of 5.1 billion USD and 4.3 billion USD respectively.  

Kevin Walsh, Forecasting Director at GfK, comments, "The size of the feature phone market in emerging APAC countries, the middle east and Africa also provides opportunities for the low end smartphone makers, as we are seeing clear evidence of consumers willing to accept a price jump, when they upgrade from a feature phone to their first smart phone."

Smartphone markets 

GfK's forecasts show that, worldwide, the smartphone continues to grow strongly, in terms of volume of sales, increasing by 18% for 2015. But there is significant shift in which countries will see those growth opportunities, with the emerging markets dominating.

Walsh explains, "Our forecasts show seven new entries in the top 10 smartphone markets for 2015, in terms of growth by value – and these are all emerging markets, which have overtaken developed markets where smartphone saturation is nearing completion."