Smartphone sales actually declined slightly in 2017

After years of steadily-increasing growth, smartphone sales actually decreased very slightly in 2017 from the year before. For the last two years, that growth had slowed dramatically - but this is the first time since 2008 that fewer phones were sold from one year to the next.

As this chart by Statista shows, smartphone shipments capped out just below 1.5 billion in 2016, with just a touch under than in 2017, making for a 0.1% dip. These results seem to be in line with Apple's just-announced holiday quarter earnings statement, where it was revealed that while the average price of an iPhone is higher than ever, they sold fewer devices than expected overall.

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