The global smartphone demand has been stagnant since the fourth quarter of 2015. All branded vendors therefore have lowered their shipment targets, and the entire market spent about three months on channel inventory digest. Avril Wu, smartphone analyst for the global market research firm TrendForce, said the stock up of Chinese branded smartphones started to pick up in the middle of February, as the inventory adjustment period came to an end.
At this year’s Mobile World Congress (MWC), the mobile payment industry took another significant step in progress with the reveal of several cross-device payment services. Visa, for example, announced that it has partnered up with smartwatch maker Pebble and auto giant Honda to bring Visa’s payment services into cars and wearable devices.
Global notebook shipments dropped significantly in 2015 mainly due to the impact of currency depreciation on the demand in Europe and the emerging markets, such as Latin America. The release of Windows 10 in the third quarter and Skylake CPU in the fourth also influenced consumers’ decision making and delayed notebook purchases.
The global LCD TV market had a dismal 2015. Rising prices of imports caused by currency depreciation was a major force that dragged down consumer spending in Europe and the emerging markets. As a result, the European LCD TV market was too weak to help sustain the overall demand as anticipated, and sell-through in the emerging markets kept falling throughout the year.
Decline in annual tablet shipments reached double digits for the first time on record in 2015, according to TrendForce. The global market research firm’s latest tablet shipment report shows a total of 168.5 million units of tablets were shipped last year, representing a 12.2% drop from 2014. The gradual contraction of the global tablet market has become a more pronounced trend.