Last year’s addition of a budget-focused iPhone SE might be one reason why more Aussies bought phones recently.
Even though everyone you know and their kids have a phone of their own, it doesn’t mean phone sales have stalled. Not entirely, anyway.
Australia’s technology analysis firm Telsyte has released its findings of sales of devices last year in the Telsyte Australian Smartphone & Wearable Devices Market Study 2021, and found that over 4.5 million phones were sold in Australia in the second half of 2020, an increase on where we were a year ago, up 3 per cent, it says.
The analysis firm has said that iPhone sales were up, selling 2.1 million iPhones in Australia, while Android models sold 2.45 million models during the same period. That might have been the result of so many 5G iPhones, or even an iPhone firmly in the mid-range with the iPhone SE. Whatever the reason, it has reportedly allowed Apple’s share of the phone market to grow in Australia, though right now, the top spots of mobile makers in the country go to Apple, Samsung, and Oppo.
Interestingly, Telsyte’s study also looked at refurbished phones versus the mid-range phones making their way out. With so many phones on the way hitting between $499 and $799, it’s providing what is likely a compelling price point to choose between buying an old phone that has been fixed up, or a phone that is new and every way for a little more.
“While there is growing interest in refurbished smartphones, this could wane as manufacturers release more affordable and highly capable new handsets,” said Alvin Lee, Senior Analyst at Telsyte.
Wearables are another factor, and while the number of Aussies using them is gradually growing, it’s an area split into wrist-based wearables such as smartwatches and smart bands, and something Telsyte is classing as smart “hearables”, which is basically an earphone that can talk to your phone using a smart assistant, a feature built into nearly every pair of earphones or headphones for the past few years.
With that in mind, Telsyte says our little spot on the underside of the world is home to 7.6 million people using smartwatches and smart bands, and 5.9 million with earphones that talk to Google, Alexa, and Siri. It says around 2.5 million wearables were sold in the second half of last year, while earphones are apparently to most popular wearable gadget.
In the smartwatch side of the market, Apple leads with the Apple Watch, though Samsung, Garmin, and Fitbit are also in there, too.
And if you thought you were the only one on the block with a smart speaker, you might want to ask Google or Alexa for the real results, with Telsyte’s research showing that more than 2.8 million Aussies had at least one smart speaker installed at the end of 2020, an increase of 600,000 over the past year.
