As RG was told in Megamarket, smartphones became the absolute leaders in sales in January-April of this year. They were purchased in the amount of 1.6 million units, 259% more compared to the same period in 2023. If we look at the cross section of customer preferences, sales of budget smartphones (costing up to 20 thousand) are the ones that increased the most: 4.5 times compared to the same period in 2023. In this price segment, the Infinix brand was the one that obtained the most sales. In second place are smartphones from the segment from 20 to 60 thousand rubles. Its sales increased almost 4 times. The most popular smartphone is one of the Samsung models. As for the premium segment, the demand for smartphones starting from 60 thousand rubles has increased by 3.5 times. As expected, the best-selling smartphone was the iPhone.
Other markets also recorded sales growth in 2024 compared to the same period in 2023.
Thus, in Yandex Market, the number of smartphones sold in the first quarter of this year increased by 1.5 times. The most popular brands by number of purchases were Xiaomi, Apple, Samsung, Infinix and TECNO.
And at OZON, in the first 5 months of 2024, smartphone sales increased by 40% in units compared to the same period last year, and smartphones from the Realme, Xiaomi and Infinix brands were the most in demand .
Telecom operators are also seeing an increase in smartphone sales. At the same time, MegaFon emphasized that online sales grew the most. “We see increased demand both in the online store and on the company’s pages in the markets. We can affirm that for some items the sales growth is higher than last year,” the company’s press service told RG. . MegaFon experts consider this a natural phenomenon: “Firstly, the convenience and attractiveness of markets for consumers is increasing. Secondly, confidence in this sales channel has increased. Thirdly, almost “All the big platforms run marketing campaigns regularly to stimulate sales.”
The MTS company informed RG that from January to May, 11.7 million smartphones worth 284.3 billion rubles were sold throughout the Russian market, which represents an increase of 10% in units and 25 % compared to the same period last year. “One of the main growth factors was pent-up demand. For the past two years, buyers have been trying to delay purchasing smartphones. Another reason is the rapid expansion of offers in various price segments of Chinese manufacturers, which are actively replacing each other’s brands. countries, as well as increased marketing activity of retailers,” the company’s press service commented on the growth of smartphone sales in 2024.
Denis Kuskov, CEO of information and analysis agency TelecomDaily, urged retailers to treat the data with caution, but agreed that online sales channels have much higher demand. “This is understandable, given that, as a rule, their equipment costs are lower than offline. So yes, sales there are growing, according to TelecomDaily, in 2023 the market recovered and reached approximately 27.5%. -28 million, I think this year there will be more, but it is unlikely that the figure will exceed 30 million,” Kuskov told RG. The CEO of TelecomDaily associates the growth in sales with pent-up demand (people buy because they have not bought before, that is, they extend the life of their devices), as well as the desire to go on vacation with a new smartphone and shopping for the next school season.
According to Eldar Murtazin, lead analyst at the mobile research group, even though actual smartphone sales increased in 2024, the statistics are distorted by the “double counting” factor. “Today, some Russian markets act, in fact, as wholesale platforms. They independently (not at the expense of the seller or distributor) offer deep discounts and rebates, and small regional sellers buy up to 50% of the products they sell from them. re-enters the market and, sometimes, for the supplier/distributor himself, taking into account the discounts and cashback, it is profitable to buy the product again on the market and put it back on the shelves, but at a higher price. high, so Market underpricing/dumping does not “destroy” your market, says Murtazin. “If you look at individual items in Russian markets, you won’t find such low prices anywhere in the world; sometimes they are even lower than wholesale prices; prices.” According to the expert, a more objective indicator is the activation data of new devices in the operators’ networks. “Yes, the growth is also visible here. It is not as surprising as in the market statistics, but it is there and it is partly related to the SVO. The fact is that some Russian households have significantly increased their income and today can afford purchases that they could not afford before, this also affected the electronics market, in particular smartphones. “We are facing a classic factor of pent-up demand, which is now becoming a reality,” says Murtazin.
