According to a new survey by IDC, smartphone sales in 2022 will decrease sharply as the market tries to overcome a number of problems. The analysts predict that the smartphone shipments will decline by 3.5% to 1.31 billion units in 2022 after three consecutive quarters of decline and new problems with both supply and demand.
However, IDC expects this to be a short-term failure and predicts that the smartphone sales will recover and reach a five-year average annual growth rate of 1.9% by 2026.
What is behind the decrease?
IDC blames several factors, such as weakening demand, inflation, continuing geopolitical tensions, and continuing supply chain constraints. However, the current blockades in China have been highlighted as the biggest problem.
Nabila Popal, research director with IDC, said the lockdowns change “global demand and supply simultaneously by reducing demand in the largest market globally and tightening the bottleneck to an already challenged supply chain.”
According to IDC, Apple is likely to be the least affected supplier due to greater control over its supply chain, and because most of its customers in the premium segment are less exposed to macroeconomic issues such as inflation. However, changing market conditions are not felt equally everywhere.
IDC expects that the largest decline in 2022 will be in Central and Eastern Europe, where shipments in the region will be reduced by 22%.
Sales of smartphones in China are projected to decline by 11.5% or about 38 million units, which is about 80% of the global reduction in shipments this year. In Western Europe, the decline will be only 1%, while the majority of other regions this year will see growth. According to IDC, growth in the Asia-Pacific region (excluding Japan and China) will be 3%.
It is expected that, despite this trend, 5G devices will not be subject to declining demand. Among the forecasts: sales of 5G devices will grow by 25.5% Y-o-Y in 2022 and will account for 53% of new shipments of nearly 700 million devices with an average retail price of $608.
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