The economic recession is weighing heavily on the global smartphone market, which continues to decline: it fell by almost 20% in the first quarter of this year, before collapsing by 6.6% in the second quarter, based on numbers TrendForce.
2023 is off to a bad start: the 272 million smartphones produced in the second quarter, added to the first quarter’s production, amount to a total of 522 million units for the first half of this year. This is a decline of 13.3% compared to the first six months of 2022.
Different companies have been affected differently. Samsung is still in the lead with 53.9 million units produced (12.4% less than in the first quarter) and a market share just under 20%. Of course, the new Galaxy Z foldable devices only arrived in the third quarter, so we have yet to see their impact, but with slow sales for the Galaxy S23 series, it may not be enough.
The second quarter is traditionally Apple’s weakest quarter – it’s just before the main iPhone launch, so most people are waiting to buy the new model or the old model at a discount. Apple is facing some production issues for the new generation, so a success in the third quarter is not certain. TrendForce predicts that it will be possible for Apple to overtake Samsung and take the top spot if the iPhone 15 series exceeds expectations.
Xiaomi increased production by 32.1% compared to the first quarter for a total of 35 million units (including Xiaomi, Redmi and Poco phones). This allowed it to beat rival Oppo for third place.
Oppo (including Oppo, Realme and OnePlus phones) drops to fourth place despite a 25.4% quarter-on-quarter increase with a total of 33.6 million smartphones produced. The company has seen strong performance in Southeast Asia and other markets, which will remain strong in the third quarter, so it will be a tight race with Xiaomi.
The biggest surprise was that Transsion (Tecno, Infinix, itel) entered the Top 5 for the first time ever and ousted vivo. The company’s entry into the medium-high range market is partly thanks to this success. The comparison from Q1 to Q2 shows a massive increase in production of 71.9%.
As for vivo (vivo, iQOO), which is now in sixth place, after a relatively small (but still positive) increase of 15% to 23 million units (compared to 25.1 million for Transsions).
The first half of 2023 represents the lowest point in global smartphone production in 10 years. And things don’t look rosy for next year either TrendForce predicting a slight annual increase of 2-3%.
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