As the life cycle for most consumer electronics products continues to decrease, specific types of consumer electronics, such as smartphones, are one of the best examples to illustrate this trend. Even in the hardest hit economies, smartphone sales grew by 23% in the midst of the 2008-2009 global economic crisis. The same trend is bound to happen in 2012, and the key difference between Northern European markets and Southern and Eastern European will be the speed from switching over from feature phones to smartphones.
Switching over to the Tablet market, and similar to the Smartphone trend, the macroeconomic factors will not influence rapid adoption in emerging markets. However the lack of a low-cost alternative for Apple’s iPad will be the the key challenge in mass adoption of tablets in the emerging markets.
Amazon’s Kindle Fire might be an alternative to this challenge, however, this tablet is currently available only for the U.S. While no similar value proposition will be available in emerging European Markets as well adoption rates will circle around the 20% benchmark, as many users will stick to the “clamshell computers”
N.B This blog post is written using data points and information from “ A Tale of Two Europes: Consumer Electronics in a Volatile European Macroeconomic Environment” by Euromonitor International.
