For Apple, Samsung: Tu off the phone, the party's over? - CNET

The smartphone industry may have seen its last year of double-digit growth in 2015, and that could spell challenges for Apple and makers of high-end Android phones.

Last year saw smartphone shipments rise by 10.4 percent from the previous year, IDC said in a report released Thursday. But this year will see that growth rate drop to just 5.7 percent from 2015.

Mature markets, such as the US, China and Weste Europe, were already mired in single-digit growth for smartphone shipments last year. High-growth markets, such as India, Indonesia, the Middle East and Africa, managed to prove stronger.

"The mature market slowdown has some grave consequences for Apple, as well as the high-end Android space, as these were the markets that absorbed the majority of the premium handsets that shipped over the past five years," Ryan Reith, program director with IDC's Worldwide Quarterly Mobile Phone Tracker, said in a statement.

The smartphone industry has been hit by a malady known as "phone fatigue." Consumers in mature markets have been tued off by a lack of exciting features in new phones, causing more of them to stick with their current smartphones. At the same time, mobile carriers are doing away with subsidized plans, causing more customers to buy their phones at the full retail price, putting a damper on sales of expensive models.