Global Smartphone Sales Slowing, With China Reporting First-Ever Sales Drop: Report

Smartphone sales are slowing worldwide, CNBC reported, citing numbers from research firm IDC. The report said global shipments will grow by only 10.4 percent this year, to 1.44 billion units -- a revision of an earlier growth forecast of 11.3 percent. Either way, it's a far cry from last year's growth rate of 27.5 percent.

In China, a country that purchased nearly a third of the world’s smartphones in 2014, sales are slowing for the first time ever. A market that saw 19.7 percent growth last year is now expected to see only 1.2 percent growth this year, the report said.

Unlike years past, China is now saturated with smartphones, meaning fewer people will be looking to buy one soon. As a result, Chinese smartphone makers are increasingly looking to foreign markets, including Brazil, Russia, Turkey and India.

"India has captured a lot of the attention that China previously received and it's now the market with the most potential upside," Ryan Reith, program director for IDC's Worldwide Quarterly Mobile Phone Tracker, said in a statement, CNBC reported. "The interesting thing to watch will be the possibility of manufacturing moving from China and Vietnam over to India."

The global smartphone market has been slumping since earlier this year. In the second quarter, the market grew just 13.5 percent compared to the same time last year -- the slowest growth rate since 2013, research company Gartner said.

"China clearly remains a very important market. However, the focus will be more on exports than consumption, as domestic growth slows significantly," Reith said in his statement.