Data from IDC reveals that Spark’s own branded phones is the fifth best-selling smartphone brand in New Zealand after Samsung, Apple, Huawei and Vodafone. This is quite a feat considering the re-branding in 2014 and stiff global competition. Spark’s market share based on smartphone shipments is 7% when including Spark owned Skinny Mobile and co-branded Plus phones with ZTE. IDC tracks shipments of smartphones, which is a great proxy for sales. Data from its recently released third quarter report shows that the New Zealand market is dominated by three brands:

• Samsung (36% market share)
• Apple’s iPhone (24% market share)
• Huawei (17% market share)

Together these three brands constitute 77% of the total market share. Huawei’s market share in New Zealand is surprisingly high for a non-Asian market. The Chinese phone maker’s share in European and North American markets is considerably lower. Huawei’s market share increased at the expense of Samsung that dropped from 43% to 36%. Figure 1. Smartphone market share by shipments in New Zealand. Data from IDC. Spark presently sells five smartphones.  The most popular one is the Spark Pro phone and the new Spark Plus. Both these phones run on the latest Android 7 Nougat operating system. Skinny’s best seller on PriceMe is the Skinny A462 phone.

Declining smartphone market

The total number of smartphone shipments declined by 9% in the third quarter from 449,000 last year to 410,000 this year.  One reason for the declining shipments is that many iPhone fans waited for the new iPhone 7 that was released at the end of the third quarter. Another reason is market saturation in New Zeland.