The continued embargo on China’s manufacturing sector over the Coronavirus will impact Africa's smartphone market.

Experts have said the continued embargo on China’s manufacturing sector over the COVID-19 outbreak (Coronavirus) will see a drop in smartphone shipments to Africa.

According to the International Data Corporation (IDC), the overall African smartphone market will shrink by 8.4% in Q1 2020 resulting in 48.7 million smartphone units.

“The closure of factories in China following the COVID-19 outbreak has severely disrupted the supply chain for components used in the production of smartphones,” said Ramazan Yavuz, a research manager at IDC.

“The fallout from the COVID-19 outbreak is compounding existing local and macroeconomic challenges across Africa, and we expect smartphone shipments to the continent to decline 14.9% QoQ in Q1 2020,” Yavuz added.

Africa’s dependency on low cost smartphones from China is a factor that will continue to impact growth in this market.

“Transsion brands (Tecno, Itel, and Infinix) continued to dominate Africa's smartphone space in Q4 2019, with 40.6% unit share. Samsung and Huawei followed in second and third place, with respective unit shares of 18.6% and 9.8%. The Transsion brands Tecno and Itel also dominated the feature phone landscape with a combined share of 69.5%. HMD placed third with 10.2% share,” the IDC report stated.

In the last quarter of 2019 Africa’s mobile phone market grew by 3.8% overall, while shipments grew at 5.4%.

The global market analysis and research firm attributed the rise due to the holiday season which includes Black Friday sale and Cyber Monday discounts.

“Africa's two largest markets - South Africa and Nigeria experienced modest YoY growth rates of 2.0% and 5.2%, respectively. South Africa's smartphone market grew 2.2% YoY in Q4 2019 to total 6.5 million units,” the report added.