Global smartphone shipments continue to fall

[Daniel Sims]

The big picture: The second quarter of 2022 solidified the end of the post-pandemic boom for multiple economic sectors. Global smartphones are no exception, according to the mobile phone tracker International Data Corporation (IDC), as last quarter's shipment numbers trended downward.

According to the IDC, the second quarter of 2022 saw smartphone shipments worldwide fall 8.7 percent year-over-year. This is the fourth consecutive quarter showing a decline in the market.

The IDC worldwide tracker team's research director, Nabila Popal, blames declining demand due to inflation and economic worries. During the pandemic, the industry's main problem was meeting increased demand amidst supply chain shocks. The situation now appears reversed, with stabilizing supply chains and sinking demand. However, Popal thinks that demand could merely be delayed, not gone.

In pure volume, the most consequential declines were in Asia. The biggest was in China, where shipments fell 14.3 percent compared to Q2 2021. There was also a 2.2 percent drop in Asia/Pacific (excluding Japan and China), which represents half of all worldwide shipments.

Unsurprisingly, the biggest decline percentage-wise was in Central and Eastern Europe – 36.5 percent year-over-year, with the war in Ukraine being the obvious cause. Excluding Canada, all other regions experienced declines below 10 percent.

The same tracker also reported tablet and Chromebook shipments falling back to Earth that quarter. Chromebooks fell just over 50 percent year over year while the growth in tablet shipments flattened.

Continuing the trend, the NPD reported nearly $2 billion less spending (a 13 percent decline) on video games in the US in Q2 2022 compared to the same quarter last year. The mobile sector is what primarily drove the decline, but everything outside non-mobile subscriptions fell. Industry analyst Mat Piscatella, echoing Popal's remarks on the Smartphone sector, says inflation is one cause.

Big hardware companies are also feeling the impact. Intel reported losing half a billion dollars in this year's second quarter after a 22 percent year-over-year fall in revenue. The company blames decreasing demand for PCs and components.

Turning back to smartphones, sales revenue from iPhones rose 2.77 percent last quarter compared to the previous year despite industry-wide difficulties. Apple's sales division also grew 12.11 percent from the previous quarter. iPhone numbers will likely be stronger later this year as the company releases the iPhone 14.

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[p51d007]

Hope they continue to fall! It will mean they have to dump the price to bring in sales.
A lot of countries, thanks to the stupidity of locking down everything, are in a recession/depression.
Most don't have the extra cash, and then there are those that have HUGE credit card debt they
can't pay off. A new smartphone every year just isn't a thing right now.

 

[lazer]

Most people that I know of have good dependable usable smart phones, and if you notice, they are not stolen by hoodlums on the subways. So why bother to buy if you are happy with what you got?

 

[Starscream07]

Hope they continue to fall! It will mean they have to dump the price to bring in sales.
A lot of countries, thanks to the stupidity of locking down everything, are in a recession/depression.
Most don't have the extra cash, and then there are those that have HUGE credit card debt they
can't pay off. A new smartphone every year just isn't a thing right now.

Smartphones were bad before and might have needed yearly upgrades.. now they are all but running out of ideas and only people who change every year are the iSheep.. My iphone X has lasted 5 years. Obviously the battery is worse and camera isnt as great anymore... but the screen is still awesome. Im so tempted to make it last another year if it means I could get 15 with USB-C?

 

[lripplinger]

I traded my old Samsung Galaxy S7 in for the new Galaxy A53 recently. Samsung gave me a $40 trade in credit surprisingly for my old phone. I keep my phones for a very long time. I don't see why I should get a new one every year or two. Love the A53 so far, and 5 years of updates from Samsung makes it all the more reason to keep it for years.