
The government's Easy E-Receipt scheme, Chinese New Year holiday and attractive instalment programmes should drive demand in the smartphone market during the first quarter amid economic challenges, according to vendors.
New smartphone purchases will be driven by consumers feeling that it is necessary to buy new phones, rather than an urge to follow a trend, Opas Cherdpunt, chief executive of M Vision Plc, organiser of the Thailand Mobile Expo, told the Bangkok Post.
The event ran from Jan 30-Feb 2 at the Queen Sirikit National Convention Center.
"The event is expected to record 2 billion baht in sales thanks to the Easy E-Receipt scheme and Chinese New Year," he said.
The Easy E-Receipt scheme, under which the value of eligible purchases of up to 50,000 baht can be deducted against personal income tax, began on Jan 16 and will run until Feb 28.
"Mobile phone vendors and operators arranged more space for clearance sales," said Mr Opas.
He said the majority of smartphones at the fair are flagship models for this year, with average prices 10% higher than last year.
The entry prices of flagship models in the Plus and Ultra series start at around 40,000 baht with a maximum price of 60,000-70,000 baht this year.
There are many instalment packages available at the event, such as 36-month programmes.
Narathip Wirunechatapant, chief executive of Singer Thailand, said since its collaboration with SG Capital under Singer group to offer the SG Finance+ instalment programme to non-credit card consumers in April last year, its offering of instalments for smartphones gained 3,200 smartphone units per month in April before rising to 33,000 in July and 67,000 in October.
"We aim to sell 100,000 smartphone units per month in 2025," he said.
SG Capital has bad debt of 1%. It has technology that can lock mobile phones when users fail to pay an instalment, which means these users cannot sell them as second-hand devices.
To achieve the target instalment of 100,000 units per month, SG Capital plans to launch debentures or increase capital by midyear.
"We estimate the total value of the instalment for non-credit card users at 21.6 billion baht, with 7.2 billion baht per year provided by SG Finance+. The value of the total smartphone market is 100 billion baht," said Mr Narathip.
Dusit Sukhumvithaya, chief executive of Jaymart Mobile, said the smartphone market in this first quarter has benefited from the Chinese New Year and Easy E-Receipt scheme as well as attractive financial instalment programmes.
Samsung cut the price of its Galaxy S24 model by at least 10,000 baht in order to support the availability of the S25 model. Normally, Samsung cuts prices of previous models by 4,000-6,000 baht before the launch of newer ones.
Mr Dusit said the average smartphone selling price this year increased from 12,000 baht to 15,000-17,000 baht.
He added that Oppo and Realme preloading two allegedly unlicensed personal loan apps in some of their models affected their sales for a few days but the situation has returned to normal.
"We noticed that since 2024, the users of Andriod operating system-based mobile phones have extended smartphone use to 24 months versus 18 months in 2023, while the users of Apple iOS smartphones have extended to 28 months from 24," said Mr Dusit.
Nath Natnithikarat, chief executive of Advice IT Infinite PC, said the company aims to increase the revenue contribution from smartphones to 14% in 2025 from 7% last year.
Meanwhile, it will increase its iStudio by Advice shops from eight branches to 35 this year.
Apirat Ratanavichit, market analyst at IDC Asia/Pacific's Client Devices, said smartphones in the mid-range segment and above will be the primary beneficiaries of the Easy E-Receipt programme.
The local smartphone market has experienced strong growth in recent quarters and the momentum is expected to continue into the first quarter of this year.
"Consequently, we anticipate that the smartphone market will experience healthy demand in the near term, partially offsetting the decline observed in 2023," he said.