At a certain point, the market will, in fact, stabilize. Has to. Demand for new smartphones has been steadily declining for some time now, but the phones themselves are obviously here to stay. This is how we got to surveys that suggest people would stop shampooing or lose a finger rather than be without a phone (shake your fist millennials!!).
But macro climates are going to be macro climates. And these new canalys figures they feel terribly like numbers from the last few quarters. The first quarter of 2022 saw a 12% year-on-year drop in global smartphone shipments. It is the fifth consecutive quarter of decline for the category. So why does something like this justify a Canalys headline like “Global Smartphone Market Shows Signs of Stability with 12% Decline in Q1 2023”?
“Stability” is, of course, a relative thing. Perhaps there is a sense in which continued decline is stable, or at least predictable. But that’s not what the firm is talking about here. Instead, it is signals in the noise that point to some reason to hope.
“However, we have noticed some signs of moderation in the continued decline,” says analyst Toby Zhu. “There have been improvements in demand for certain smartphone products and price bands. Additionally, some smartphone vendors are becoming more active in production planning and component ordering. Canalys predicts that smartphone industry inventory, regardless of channel or vendor, can reach a relatively healthy level by the end of Q2 2023.”
Image Credits: canalys
The stability here means that, assuming a lot more things don’t suddenly go off course for the world (not a bet I’d necessarily be willing to take right now), things could start to change for the market as soon as the end of East. room. Accepting my tendency to embrace cheerful optimism, I’ll point out that things have had a tendency to add up of late. The declines predate the pandemic and were ultimately accelerated by it. Then there were the supply chain issues and then the macroeconomic struggles. Chain effects on chain effects.
From my point of view, this is the main reason to be positive: phones are now commodities. Sooner or later, people will need to update. Phone makers haven’t done a great job preparing that pump, and the industry has yet to agree on a 6G standard, but at a certain point, devices slow down, batteries stop charging, and it’s time to buy one. new.
We are three years into this global pandemic, and that time is probably on the horizon for many people who have been waiting for various reasons. I suspect that Apple being forced to adopt USB-C will ultimately have a positive impact on iPhone 14 sales as well. This time, however, Apple came in second, with 21% of the market vs. Samsung’s 22. Xiaomi, Oppo and Vivo rounded out the top five.