Researchers at the International Data Corporation (IDC) said global smartphone shipments are expected to decline 3.5 percent to 1.31 billion units in 2022.
The IDC’s latest Worldwide Quarterly Mobile Phone Tracker forecast obtained by TechEconomy said due to increasing challenges with supply and demand, IDC is significantly reducing its forecast for 2022, which previously predicted 1.6 percent growth.
According to the report, 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 geopolitical 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.
The forecast also predicted that 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, IDC.
“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.”
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.
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