Global mobile phone shipments continue to decline, but India and China, two of Asia’s major economies, are bucking the trend when it comes to high-end phones.
This month, technology analyst Canalys revealed that sales to retailers, distributors and others fell 17% in the final quarter of 2022 as many worked to clear existing inventory in preparation for a continued slowdown. spending.
Last week, IDC said smartphone shipments fell 18.3% year-over-year to 300.3 million units in the fourth quarter of 2022, the biggest single drop ever. quarter and a decline of 11.3% for the year.
The 1.2 billion units shipped in 2022 is the fewest since 2013. But in India, the decline was below the overall trend at just 9% year on year, according to Counterpoint Research.
Counterpoint Research attributed the fall – only the second largest in India in the smartphone market – to declining market performance in the entry-level and budget segments, thanks to both lower demand and market constraints. supply chain.
Meanwhile, its premium segment, defined as smartphones costing around more than $365, contributed the highest ever to market revenue at 35%.
Case in point: India’s favorite high-end handsets were Samsung products, which accounted for 22% of shipment value share, followed by Apple. Research analyst Shilpi Jain said the trend “implies the Indian smartphone market moving from a volume driven market to a value driven market”.
Counterpoint calculated the drop in smartphone sales in China at 14%, its lowest in a decade.
An exception to the Chinese trend is Apple, which lost only 3% of its sales market share. By outperforming other brands in China, the iPhone maker was able to oust Chinese brand Oppo to become the country’s number two for the year, just behind Vivo. This feat was accomplished even though there were iPhone 14 shortages.
Apple has also performed well globally – IDC listed the company as accounting for just under a quarter of Q4 2022 market share and 18.8% for the year. This puts the company second in the world behind Samsung for the year and the highest for the quarter. ®