In 2022, Russia became the eighth country in the world in terms of smartphone sales – 2.3% of gadgets produced by the global industry were sold on the domestic market. This follows from a study of the Russian GS Group, which Izvestia got acquainted with.
A year earlier, Russia was in sixth place with a share of 2.6%.
The decline was enough to let Japan (2.5%) and Mexico (2.8%) go ahead, the authors of the document calculated. The leaders in gadget consumption are still China (in 2022, it accounted for 24.1%), India (12.7%) and the United States (11.9%), followed by Brazil and Indonesia with indicators of (3 ,1%).
Interest in smartphones in Russia, in particular, is supported by the high level of development of the digital economy, in which this particular gadget is considered one of the key components, explains Alexander Surkov, head of the GS Group analytical center. In the second quarter of 2022, buyers reduced spending on non-essential goods, but when the situation normalized and pent-up demand appeared, the share of Russia increased to 3.1% in the third quarter of 2022 and to 2.9% in the fourth quarter, calculated in GS Group.
Parallel imports, price stability and saturation of the market with brands from China, according to Alexander Surkov, will lead to the fact that this year Russia will regain sixth place, and its share in the next few years will not be lower than 2.5%.
Maintaining the status of one of the world’s largest markets means that Russian buyers will continue to be among the first to receive new products from manufacturers (in particular, Chinese), discounts and promotions will remain, says Denis Kuskov, CEO of TelecomDaily. After the stabilization of the geopolitical situation, the return of the departed brands is quite possible: Russian sites are still extremely attractive for them, he concluded.
