KResearch has assessed that Thailand's smartphone market will continue to endure various challenges in 2017, perhaps causing expansion to be sluggish. The main factor may be a lack of new technological innovation, unlike the transformation from 2G to 3G/4G systems over the past year. We also expect that smartphone sales may reach 17.2-17.4 million units in 2017, growing only 1.8-2.9 percent, thus would represent a deceleration from 2016 in which growth is likely 8.3 percent YoY. In value, our smartphone market may yield THB96.55-THB97.95 billion in sales during 2017, growing 3.0-4.5 percent over 2016, wherein growth is expected to be 5.0 percent YoY.
Nonetheless, we view that intense competition among smartphone manufacturers and dealers, as well as telecom service providers, will be significant towards driving growth in 2017. In particular, Chinese smartphone manufacturers will be earnestly conducting marketing campaigns to gain larger market shares here.
We also expect that existing smartphone users will be primary marketing targets, because they are mostly middle- to upper-income earners with strong purchasing power; in many cases, they will likely purchase new devices to replace obsolete handsets. At the same time, some mobile phone users, especially those who closely follow new technology, may purchase new models just because they want the latest in new features on their phones. Such consumers may sell their existing phones, which may enter the second-hand market, or they may buy another phone and maintain both for use.
During 2017, KResearch also expects that Chinese-made smartphones will account for over 30.0 percent share of the total smartphone sales in our market, which would represent two-fold growth over 2015, when smartphones from China only captured 15.0 percent of all sales in Thailand. This growth, however, comes from wresting market shares away from existing smartphone brands of other origins.
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