Is the writing on the wall? Next month Apple will be launching the new iPhone 7 and the excitement around the news has been somewhat lackluster, will the product that took the company to stratospheric heights be able to repeat the performance again this year.

Apple continued its downward trend with a decline of 7.7 percent in the second quarter of 2016. Apple sales declined in North America (its biggest market) as well as in Western Europe. However, it witnessed its worst sales decline in Greater China and mature Asia/Pacific regions, where sales declined 26 percent.

Meanwhile, global sales of smartphones totaled 344 million units in the second quarter of 2016, a 4.3 percent increase over the same period in 2015, according to Gartner, Inc. Overall sales of mobile phones contracted by 0.5 percent with only five vendors from the top 10 showing growth. Among them were four Chinese manufacturers (Huawei, Oppo, Xiaomi and BBK Communication Equipment) and South Korea’s Samsung.

“Demand for premium smartphones slowed in the second quarter of 2016 as consumers wait for new hardware launches in the second half of the year,” said Anshul Gupta, research director at Gartner. In addition, the decline in sales of “feature phones” bolstered the decline in overall sales of mobile phones in the second quarter of 2016

Table 1

Worldwide Smartphone Sales to End Users by Vendor in 2Q16 (Thousands of Units)

Source: Gartner (August 2016)

In the second quarter of 2016, Samsung had nearly 10 percent more market share than Apple. Samsung saw sales of its Galaxy A and Galaxy J series smartphones compete strongly with Chinese manufacturers. Its new smartphone portfolio also helped Samsung win back share it recently lost in emerging markets.