Screen Shot 2015-08-25 at 7.19.08 AMThe smartphone market is slowing down, according to a new forecast from IDC released today. Shipments are expected to grow this year, but only by 10.4 percent. That’s a drastic slowdown from 27.5 percent growth last year.

Google’s Android will likely still lead the market in five years with the same 81 percent of shipments it’s forecasted to get this year according to IDC, while iOS may lose a percentage point to Microsoft’s Windows Phone and others, but Apple will remain in second place.

Recently, China has emerged as the prime selling market for flagship phones, accounting for nearly a third of worldwide smartphone shipments. But the market there is starting to get as saturated as the U.S. market, meaning fewer people are looking to buy a new phone.

Screen Shot 2015-08-25 at 7.23.42 AM
Source: IDC. Worldwide Smartphone Forecast by OS, Shipments, Market Share, Growth and 5-Year CAGR (units in millions)

“India has captured a lot of the attention that China previously received and it’s now the market with the most potential upside,” IDC’s Ryan Reith said in a press release. “The interesting thing to watch will be the possibility of manufacturing moving from China and Vietnam over to India.”

The slowdown is expected to hit both iOS and Android about equally, but Windows Phone may see the most growth over the next five years. IDC predicts nearly 13 percent year-over-year growth from Windows Phone in 2019, compared to just 3.3 and 5 percent growth forecast for iOS and Android respectively.

However, that growth rate is on a small base of existing units, and won’t translate into a huge increase in market share. Windows Phone is predicted to ship about 37 million phones this year, 2.6 percent of total smartphone shipments. That 13 percent year-over-year growth will take it up just one percentage point in overall market share by 2019 as other operating systems’ shipments continue climb slowly.

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