The global smartphone market has seen a decline in the past year, according to a Canalys report. There were 36.5 million fewer smartphones sold in the first quarter of 2022 compared to the previous year – bringing the numbers from 347.7 million to 311.2 million. Almost all brands were negatively impacted leading to this net loss, but Apple countered the flow by finding growth within the time period. Let’s look at the patterns in order to find out why and make some predictions.
Based on this table, Samsung, Apple, and Xiaomi are still the top three smartphone manufacturers on the planet with a healthy lead over the competition. The points difference between each of the brands still remains to be more or less the same. The only exception is Apple, who found an 8% push in 2022 shipments and crawls closer and closer to Korean tech giant Samsung. This is a huge win since the Californian tech outfit has a far smaller lineup of devices to sell to consumers.
A majority of the losses come from the sharp decrease in sales within the Greater China region. Local economists state that this is likely to be caused by the lower-than-expected yearly growth for the country’s economy as a whole. A lack of innovation within the smartphone industry also hampers buyer sentiment and leads to people holding on to their hard-earned money instead. This applies not only to China, but to the other regions as well.
We could be seeing big changes to the demand for smartphones moving forward. External factors such as the easing of chip shortages could provide a second lifeline to this industry, but promises of longevity like including more software updates could affect buyer purchase intervals. Let’s not forget upcoming restrictions of COVID-19 should a new strain tear through the world once again, or developments in the Russia-Ukraine conflict.
Smartphones are getting more expensive after all. Maybe the goal is no longer to sell MORE smartphones but to gain more profits from each one.
Based on data from previous years, manufacturers should be able to hope for a pattern more like 2019 and 2020 rather than 2021. Since sales in the global smartphone market were found to be unremarkable by Canalys early this year, the saying “nowhere to go but up” might just apply. If so, then we could see a resurgence of device sales back to Q1 2021 levels sometime within the year.
Does any of this information surprise you? Are you looking to upgrading smartphones soon? Let us know in the comments!
