Smartphone shipments continue to dip, and IDC adds that Q4 2022–also the holiday season–experienced the biggest decline.

The demand for smartphones is still in a decline, and IDC reports that Q4 had the biggest drop at 18.3% despite being part of the holiday season. Considering that the holiday season should be a lucrative time for brands in terms of sales, IDC explained that the dip is also a result of them cutting shipments–focusing first more on selling existing inventory through sales and promotions.

“Rising inflation and growing macro concerns continue to stunt consumer spending even more than expected and push out any possible recovery to the very end of 2023,” IDC research director Nabila Popal said.

The decline is so significant, that even Apple suffered from setbacks–with a year-to-year chance of -14.9%–due to unforeseen lockdowns at its key factories in China. This comes at a time when there’s significant demand for the iPhone 14 series–and Apple has a hard time keeping up with it.

Looking at overall smartphone shipments in 2022, Samsung and Apple have the smallest decline at -4.1 and -4.0% respectively, while OPPO and vivo took the biggest hit at -22.7 and -22.8 respectively.

With those numbers, IDC expects all brands to restrategize their product portfolios in 2023, while stores will have to think twice about what phones to take to avoid excessive inventories. However, this might be a win for consumers, especially with brands offering trade-in offers and other similar promotions to encourage their customers to upgrade their phones–and to sell more devices at the same time.