Source: GfK data
I’ve just been playing around with some smartphone data from GfK, which collects its data by point-of-sale (POS) tracking in 90+ markets and estimates values based on unsubsidized retail pricing — meaning I guess that these are not the prices that folk may be paying for their phones exactly, but ultimately. The chart above is me calculating the Average Selling Price by dividing unit sales with sales value.
Raw conclusions: Emerging APAC — India, Indonesia, Cambodia, Philippines, Malaysia, Thailand and Vietnam — have the cheapest smartphones in the world, and they’re getting cheaper. Two years ago they were above $200, now they’re less than $160.
Then there’s Developed Asia: Australia, Hong Kong, Japan, New Zealand, Singapore, South Korea and Taiwan. There smartphones are the most expensive in the world, by a yard or two. Although prices have fallen too, by 8%, in the two years, folk in this part of the world still pay $150 more for their smartphones.
And then there’s China. China started below the Middle East and Africa, Central/Eastern Europe and Latin American but ended it up above all three, with the ASP rising by 16%. Interestingly, the rise occured in one spurt (making me worry there’s a problem with the data, though this might be down to the launch of the iPhone 6 in China in the last quarter of 2014. ASPs there have held steady since.)
Bottom line: Anyone selling phones in Asia — indeed, anything that involves mobile — needs to think in terms of at least three distinct markets, in terms of purchasing power, in terms of computing power, in terms of screen size and connectivity.