Mobile Market Saturation

 

Concerns for the mobile communication industry’s growth and future are rising, as the number of this year’s new smartphone users has increased by only 50% compared to last year’s statistics. 

On October 20, according to the industry and the Ministry of Science, ICT and Future Planning, last year there was an average of 2.54 million new smartphone users per quarter. But so far up to August this year, the average dropped to 1.35 million new users per quarter. The increase range reached only 53.1% of last year’s numbers. 

In fact, for July through August, there were only 76K new smartphone users, making the Q3 increase range a little over a million. 

The number of smartphone users out of the total number of users increased by an average of 4.5% per quarter last year, while for this year’s Q1 to Q2, only 1.9% increased. 

The over-saturation of the smartphone market, as well as the market recession, is showing directly through the number of new smartphone users. 

The mobile communication industry explains that the market recession is caused by smartphone market saturation. 

In fact, last year, market research company Strategy Analytics (SA) reported that Korea ranked number one in the world with a 67.6% smartphone distribution rate, and that this number is 4.6 times higher than the world’s smartphone distribution rate of 14.8%. SA expects Korea to maintain its place as first in the world, with this year’s rate being 79.5%.

By August this year, there are 36.32 million new smartphone users. Out of the total 54.16 million mobile communication users, 67.1% have smartphones.

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