U.S. saw 6% overall drop in smartphone sales last quarter, research firm says

Many analysts have been tracking a global slowdown in the rate of smartphone sales growth, partly because many regions have become heavily saturated with high-end models like Apple's iPhone and Samsung's Galaxy S phones.

Now, there is a report of an actual decline of 6% in smartphone sales, as measured in dollars, in the U.S. and all of North America in the fourth quarter of 2015. It is the first decline since early 2012.

That’s according to GfK, a major research firm based in Nuremberg, Germany, which uses actual retail sales and not the manufacturer shipments used by other research firms to tally results.

GfK reported today that smartphone sales reached $23.9 billion in North America for the fourth quarter, down from $25.6 billion for the fourth quarter of 2014. For the U.S. alone, sales were $20.5 billion, down from $21.8 billion for the same periods.

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