Smartphones and Tablets Rebound to Positive Growth in Q2 '17

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The second quarter of 2017 was a buoyant quarter for business smartphones and tablets, as the market showed signs of a rebound. Business smartphone shipments grew +14.8% YoY, to reach 107.1 million units in Q2 2017, up 6.1% sequentially from Q1 2017. Business tablets reached 17.3 million units in the second quarter, a 7.5% increase from Q1 2017 and a 0.7% increase on Q2 2016. Overall, while Q2 2017 showed signs of an uptick on a slower first quarter, suggesting signs of slight improvement for the remainder of the year, the outlook still remains volatile, with longer replacement cycles and GDPR likely to impact the market over the short to medium term. Through the first half of the year, the pace of business mobile devices shipments appears to be on trend with what we are accustomed to seeing with the current expansion – shipments registering disappointing first quarter growth performance to be followed with a stronger pace of growth in the second quarter.

According to Gina Luk, principal analyst of Mobile Workforce Strategiesat Strategy Analytics, "Overall, the business smartphone industry expanded steadily in the second quarter, Samsung saw positive shipment growth while Apple's shipments slipped by 11.0%. Android and iOS are the two dominant operating systems in the market, as Windows 10 smartphone shipments continued to be squeezed out by the industry with close to zero market share. Worldwide Personal Liable smartphones continue to dominate over corporate liable shipments, at 63.5% of global deployments."

"The worldwide business tablet market remains volatile; it rebounded slightly to reach 17.3 million units in the second quarter, a 7.5% increase from Q1 2017, but year on year growth was flat at 0.7% on Q2 2016. The picture is still quite mixed. North American business tablet volumes were up 5.4% sequentially in Q2 2017, however shipments declined 4.2% YoY. The story was similar in Central & Latin America, which grew 2.2% quarterly, but shrank by 6.1% from Q2 2016, although other regions are registering positive quarter-over-quarter growth", added Andrew Brown, executive director of Enterprise Research at Strategy Analytics.

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