Smartphone shipments expected to fall
 

The mobile revolution appears to be grinding to a halt as IDC expects a slow down in smartphone shipments at least until 2018.

Beancounters at IDC have been shuffling their Tarot cards and see that there will be a sharp drop in the growth in global smartphone shipments this year and keep slowing through 2018.

The report predicts that average prices will drop significantly as demand shifts to China and other developing countries.

Annual growth in 2014 is expected to be 19.3 percent and then decline to 6.2 percent in 2018, IDC said in a report. That follows a 39.2 percent jump in 2013 when smartphone shipments topped 1 billion units for the first time.

This reinforces concerns on Wall Street that the explosion in is coming to an end, at least in the United States and other developed countries where consumers favour pricey, top-tier handsets.

Smartphone growth in North America and Europe is expected to shrink to single digits and Japan could even see a slight slowdown in shipments in the next few years, IDC said.

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