Smartphone shipments suffer a largest-ever decline, says IDC

Worldwide smartphone shipments declined 18.3% year-over-year to 300.3 million units in the fourth quarter of 2022 according to preliminary data from the International Data Corporation (IDC).  

For the year, shipments fell 11.3% and marked the lowest total for a decade, IDC researchers said. Shipments totaled 1.21 billion units in 2022, the lowest yearly total since 2013. Weak consumer demand, rising prices, and economic uncertainty all contributed to this decline. This challenging close to the year puts the 2.8% recovery expected for 2023 in serious jeopardy with heavy downward risk to the forecast.  

"We have never seen shipments in the holiday quarter come in lower than the previous quarter. However, weakened demand and high inventory caused vendors to cut back drastically on shipments," said Nabila Popal, research director with IDC's Worldwide Tracker team.  

According to IDC, Apple only shipped 72.3 million iPhones in the December quarter, which is a drop of 14.9% compared to the same quarter a year earlier. 

Foxconn employees in the Chinese city of Zhengzhou took to the streets at the world's largest iPhone manufacturing in late November because of Covid restrictions and unpaid incentives. Reportedly, the demonstrations at the Zhengzhou facility severely impacted iPhone production, which resulted in huge shipment delays for the holidays. 

In comparison to the previous year, Samsung's shipments were down 15.6%. Samsung has factories in South Korea and Vietnam, making smartphones one of the country's top exports and a major source of revenue. Falling demand for semiconductors was a major factor in Samsung's most significant quarterly earnings loss in more than a decade. As the market leader in providing memory and screens for the smartphone sector, the company's exposure to smartphone sales is increased. 

Chinese mobile manufacturers OPPO and vivo are two other significant smartphone brands that had declines in shipments in the same quarter, along with Xiaomi, which saw a drop of 26.3%.