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Global Smartphone Shipments to Decline 3.5% in 2022, Apple to Be Least Impacted

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Global smartphone shipments are expected to decline 3.5 percent to 1.31 billion units in 2022, according to IDC's latest Worldwide Quarterly Mobile Phone Tracker forecast. Because of increasing challenges with supply and demand, IDC is significantly reducing its forecast for 2022, which previously predicted 1.6 percent growth.

iPhone-14-Lineup-Feature-Teal.jpg

IDC believes Apple will be the "least impacted vendor" because of its control over its supply chain and because iPhone customers are in the higher-priced segment and are not as impacted by macroeconomic issues like inflation.

Weakening demand, inflation, supply chain constraints, and geo-political tensions are impacting all smartphone vendors, resulting in cutbacks. Even major smartphone manufacturers like Samsung and Apple have cut orders. IDC says that it expects the challenges to ease by the end of the year, barring any new setbacks. The 2023 market is expected to recover with 5 percent growth.

Semiconductor supply issues are also expected to ease in the second half of 2022.
"The ongoing semiconductor supply issues will ease up in the second half of 2022. On the SoC side, 4G SoC supply has been tight, but the market continues to shift towards 5G SoCs," said Phil Solis, research director in IDC's Enabling Technologies and Semiconductors team. "The bigger problem has been the tight supply of components such as PMICs, display drivers, and discrete Wi-Fi chips. Capacity is being increased for these semiconductors that are made in higher process nodes and newer versions of Wi-Fi chips are being made with newer process nodes. At the same time, demand is dropping. Combined, these supply and demand changes will put the market more in equilibrium."
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Apple in the second fiscal quarter of 2022 had difficulty meeting demand for the current iPhone, iPad, and Mac models because of supply constraints, and the company said in April that it expects those issues to continue into the third fiscal quarter. At the current time, the Mac and iPad appear much more affected by supply chain issues than the iPhone.

Recent rumors have suggested that the iPhone 14 Max is several weeks behind schedule compared to the other iPhone 14 models due to supply chain issues, but Apple analyst Ming-Chi Kuo has said that Apple has the situation under control and suppliers are going to be able to work overtime to watch up. Whether or not these supply issues result in delays or fewer iPhones available for purchase in September remains to be seen.

Article Link: Global Smartphone Shipments to Decline 3.5% in 2022, Apple to Be Least Impacted
 
Article Link
https://www.macrumors.com/2022/06/01/apple-least-impacted-smartphone-shipment-decline/
The new tech in smart phones is no longer revolutionary. At best it is modestly revolutionary. Apple is making better relative progress in this mostly mature product space but even Apple will have to start upping its game by building new disruptive products but, so far, their is nothing even rumored right now that doesn’t cannibalize existing products.
 
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ajfahey said:
The new tech in smart phones is no longer revolutionary. At best it is modestly revolutionary. Apple is making better relative progress in this mostly mature product space but even Apple will have to start upping its game by building new disruptive products but, so far, their is nothing even rumored right now that doesn’t cannibalize existing products.
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Smartphones have gone about as far as they can. Everyone is having trouble getting past 5nm, including Apple apparently. Until there’s some breakthrough in miniaturization, I can’t think of anything a smartphone could do that it can’t already. Neither can the smartphone makers, apparently.

Let’s see how this VR headset plays out.
 
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This is the benefit of being a luxury goods maker… its customers tend to be least impacted by inflation. But if Jamie Dimon is correct, and I suspect he is, the economy will be a ”hurricane” which will impact everyone/every company to one degree or another.
 
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Not surprised, phones are good enough, market is saturated, inflation, people are saving their money for other important things. But gotta say, the amount of iPhone 13 Pro Maxes I see in use is astounding, not to mention the regular standard iPhone 13. The fact that there is over a billion Safari users shows Apple has a stable market. The vast majority of iPhone users will always upgrade to iPhones.
 
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cambric said:
iPhone is the best phone
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I have to agree, I had the Samsung S21 Ultra, then the S22 and what a piece! The S22 overheated doing absolutely nothing, burning my leg in my pocket. I have the 13 pro 256 and no overheating, hear that Samsung! I had it in my pocket cutting my grass in 85 degree heat with the leather Apple case and no overheating.
 
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I'm not entirely that surprised. The iPhone already targets people who are more better off, and usually they (minus extenuating circumstances or the economy really has a problem), are less affected by inflation and economic slowdowns.
 
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erikkfi said:
I must've missed the release of the colorful purple iPhone 13 pictured here.
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It’s an image speculating on the potential colours for the iPhone 14. The filename of the image is “iPhone-14-Lineup-Feature-Teal.jpg”
 
It's challenging times ahead for all companies as we're headed into inflationary depression.
 
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3.5% is a small percentage, but a big number. According to Gartner, about 1.5 billion phones were sold last year, meaning a decrease in sales of over 52 million units this year. That's a lot of phones.
 
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Luxury brands are generally less susceptible to economic events.
Apple's YoY record breaking revenue during the pandemic should already be a clue.
 
Mr. Dee said:
Not surprised, phones are good enough, market is saturated, inflation, people are saving their money for other important things. But gotta say, the amount of iPhone 13 Pro Maxes I see in use is astounding, not to mention the regular standard iPhone 13. The fact that there is over a billion Safari users shows Apple has a stable market. The vast majority of iPhone users will always upgrade to iPhones.
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You are right. Incremental camera upgrades and battery improvements are good, but it isn't like going from a Nokia N95, Blackberry etc to an iPhone 1. Or an iPhone 1 to a 6 or 13 etc. This is why Apple claims to be so focused on services - a reliable revenue stream. Hopefully they don't screw it up because it will provide stability for their revenues if/when an update is lackluster.
 
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Now we just need to train people how to configure their iPhones.
Someone at work today lost their iPhone, I opened safari and went to iCloud and told them to sign in and use find my or sound an alert… They haven’t set that up… ugh!
Fortunately they found it later back in storage area. :rolleyes:
 
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