China’s smartphone market is about to come to a complete standstill

China’s smartphone growth was already slowing last year as the mature market neared saturation point, but a new forecast says it’s about to grind to a standstill. IDC today issued new forecasts saying smartphone shipments in China will grow only 1.2 percent in 2015 – way down from 19.7 percent in 2014. The IDC report attributes this dramatic slowdown to China joining North America and Western Europe “in a more mature growth pattern.” Now that nearly every consumer in the country has an Android or iPhone of some variety (okay, and maybe a Windows phone here or there), China has officially hit peak smartphone. The report made no mention of China’s economic slowdown, which was worsened by this month’s stock slump. That might suppress consumer demand, leaving people less likely to upgrade their phones this year. As China’s market hits saturation point, the country will become less of a factor in the global smartphone market. China accounted for 32.3 percent of all new smartphone shipments in 2014, but IDC projects that will slip to 23.1 percent in 2019 as fast-growing India goes through the kind of boom that China enjoyed in the past decade.