Russians have become more interested in non-standard smartphones

In 2024, Russians showed increased interest in non-standard smartphones, according to data from the combined retail network of Megafon and Yota, which were reviewed by Izvestia on January 30. Sales of flexible devices grew by more than 107%, while gadgets with artificial intelligence (AI) capabilities were purchased 1.8 times more often than in 2023.

Experts noted that Chinese brands continued to grow in the smartphone market. As follows from the sales statistics of the united retail network, the largest share in sales in physical terms took manufacturers from China - Xiaomi and Realme - 26% and 20% respectively. The third line is occupied by Tecno brand (15%). In monetary terms, Apple is the leader with 21%, followed by Xiaomi (18%) and Samsung (14%).

At the same time, in 2024, Russians purchased 81% more devices with AI, spending 1.5 times more on them than in 2023. Among the functions of such gadgets are, among other things, composing a brief summary of letters in mail or messages in messengers, searching for a photo in a gallery by text description, text editor, and removing certain objects from a photo.

Another segment that has been gaining popularity over the past year is foldable and convertible smartphones. Sales of flexible smartphones in both units and money doubled compared to the figures of 2023, and their share among all sold smartphones increased three times, according to the data of the united retail network.

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Earlier, on January 19, the head of projects "Megafon" on the development of sales of devices on the secondary market Nikita Zubkov gave advice on preparing for the sale of a used smartphone. According to him, first of all, it is necessary to transfer the necessary information to another device or cloud storage, as well as log out of all accounts. In addition, you need to remove the SIM card from the device or deactivate it in the settings. The final step before the sale is a factory reset.