Global smartphone shipments will drop in 2019, but 5G demand should help the industry bounce back

Excited about the 5G revolution officially kicked off by Verizon (well, sort of) earlier this week? If a couple of recent reports didn’t make it abundantly clear, it’s going to take quite some time for 5G-enabled smartphones to become mainstream and then ultimately transform the industry in a number of truly meaningful ways.

In the meantime, global smartphone shipments are expected to drop below 1.5 billion units in 2019, according to Digitimes Research. The stagnation of a market that’s been growing at an incredible pace since the launch of the first iPhone and the impressive expansion ...