Global smartphone sales volume will grow +7% in 2017, improved from 2% annual growth rate in 2016, thanks to improved economic situations in selected regions / countries, as well as expected hardware innovations which would trigger strong replacement sales.

Worldwide smartphone volumes will steadily expand by +36% from 2016 to 2022. Asia Pacific remains as the biggest region, followed by North America. Africa Middle East will maintain the highest growth rate through 2021. The three largest smartphone countries by far in the next five years will be China, India and the USA, due to their massive populations.

The world’s top 20 countries will account for 79% of worldwide smartphone sales in 2017, up from 73% in 2007 – and since 2017 it will stabilize at 79%. We recommend smartphone stakeholders to prioritize these top 20 countries, and take extra attention to the most of the biggest addressable country markets.