Smartphone sales will register their worst ever decline this year before rebounding in 2020

Because the year’s third quarter hasn’t even ended yet, we don’t have any new smartphone sales numbers to add on top of the market’s pretty poor results reported for the first six months of 2019. But Gartner has just come out with an interesting new report that paints a pretty bleak picture as far as future Q3 and Q4 global totals are concerned.
The next standard in cellular connectivity is expected to help boost the aforementioned 2019 total by a solid 2.9 percent in 2020, although only 10 percent of next year’s global sales are forecasted to go to 5G-capable phones. That number should then rise at a pretty staggering pace, accounting for more than half of the world’s sales by 2023 if Gartner’s projections prove accurate.
When looking at the larger picture of the “device” market, including tablets and PCs in addition to mobile phones, Gartner expects an even more substantial decline in shipments of 3.7 percent this year. But 2020’s smartphone rebound should be enough to offset yet another dip in global sales for both traditional computers and “ultramobiles.”