Heavy drop in smartphone sales in Europe in the second quarter

April was terrible for smartphone sales. It was during this month that containment measures were the hardest in many European countries. According to Counterpoint, sales plunged 45% from April 2019, and 30% from March 2020. Most physical stores have closed to stem the epidemic, but e-commerce sites have continued. their activities.

A fatal month of April

That wasn’t enough to offset the drop in demand from Europeans, and for good reason: smartphones lose a lot of their appeal when you’re locked in at home all day. With the gradual lifting of travel restrictions, sales took off very strongly: + 33% in May compared to April, + 34% in June compared to May.

Despite these two months of recovery, the second quarter saw a significant drop in smartphone sales of 24% year over year. The results in France are worse than the average noted by the report (-25%). France is doing worse than Italy and Spain (-16% and -19% respectively), while these two countries have been the hardest hit by the coronavirus. The drop in sales was 25% in Germany, 26% in the United Kingdom, 27% in Russia.

Among the brands that have succeeded in this very difficult context, note the performance of OPPO and Xiaomi, which benefited from very good results (+ 41% and + 55% compared to last year) . The two manufacturers took advantage of the vacuum created by the decline of Huawei in Europe, which can however count on its strong presence in Russia, where it holds 29% of the market.

OnePlus also has an excellent record with sales up 128% in Western Europe, thanks among other things to the OnePlus 7t and 8. Samsung remains largely ahead of the European market with 35% (-1 point compared to the second quarter 2019), followed by Apple (17%, +2 points) and Huawei (16%, -6 points).

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