IDC: Smartphone Sales Declined 18.3 Percent in Q4, 11.3 in 2022

The market analysts at IDC have weighed in on smartphone sales in 2022 and what they see mirrors the horrible results we saw in the PC industry: massive declines that only got worse as the year progressed.

Note: Normally, I’d wait on Gartner to also chime in on smartphone sales, as I do with PC sales, but looking at its site and at last year, I can see that Gartner waited until March 2022 to report on 2021 smartphone sales. So consider this a preliminary report: I’ll write a new post when Gartner finally shows up too.

According to the firm, hardware makers shipped 1.2 billion smartphones in calendar year 2022, a decline of 11.3 percent year-over-year (YOY) and the “lowest annual shipment total since 2013.” But things got even worse by the fourth quarter, the holiday quarter, when shipments nose-dived by 18.3 percent, to 300 million units. IDC described it as the “largest-ever decline in a holiday quarter.”

“We continue to witness consumer demand dwindle as refresh rates climb past 40 months in most major markets,” IDC’s Anthony Scarsella said. “With 2022 declining more than 11 percent for the year, 2023 is set up to be a year of caution as vendors will rethink their portfolio of devices while channels will think twice before taking on excess inventory. However, on a positive note, consumers may find even more generous trade-in offers and promotions continuing well into 2023 as the market will think of new methods to drive upgrades and sell more devices, specifically high-end models.”

Samsung is once again the world’s biggest smartphone maker, according to IDC, with sales of 261 million units in 2022. That’s down 4.1 percent YOY, but its marketshare of 22 percent is up from the prior year, when it controlled 20 percent of the market.

Apple was again number two, with 226 million units sold. Here again, we see a 4 percent drop in unit shipments YOY, but Apple again raised its market share: it controlled just 17.3 percent of the market in 2021.

The rest of the top five are all Chinese firms and each experienced double-digit drops in unit sales. Xiaomi was number three, with 153 million units sold (12.7 percent market share, unit sales down 20 percent), followed by OPPO (103 million, 8.6 percent, down 23 percent) and vivo (99 million, 8.2 percent, down 23 percent).