Interface News Reporter | Li Biao
Interface News Editor |
After the global smartphone market share was surpassed by Apple in the fourth quarter of last year, Samsung returned to the first place with a slight margin in the first quarter of this year.
On April 18, Canalys released the global smartphone market report for the first quarter of 2023, showing that global smartphone shipments fell 12% year-on-year, which is already the fifth consecutive quarter of decline. Over the past year, global smartphone shipments have fallen to an eight-year record low, yet the decline in demand in the smartphone market has not yet bottomed out.
In the latest quarter, Samsung was the only one among the top manufacturers to achieve sequential growth, struggling to return to the first place with a market share of 22%; Apple fell to second with 21%. Driven by new product launches at the end of the quarter, Xiaomi maintained its third position with an 11% market share; OPPO and vivo strengthened their market positions in Asia Pacific and China, accounting for 10% and 8% of the global share, respectively, occupying the third and fourth positions.
Image credit: Canalys
Driven by solid demand for the iPhone 14 Pro series released at the end of last year, the market share gap between Apple and Samsung in a single quarter is narrowing, reaching just 1% in the first quarter of 2023. The gap between the two in the first quarter of 2022 was 6%.
Image credit: Canalys
In fact, stretched to the whole year's data, Samsung has always been the world's shipping hegemon. For the whole year of 2022, Samsung's global smartphone shipments reached 2.58 billion units, accounting for 22% of the market share; Apple accounted for 2.32 billion units, accounting for 19%.
Image credit: Canalys
Canalys analyst Sanyam Chaurasia said the decline in the first quarter was actually expected by the industry. Macroeconomic instability in parts of the world continues to hinder manufacturers' investment and operations in some markets. In his view, although major mobile phone manufacturers have been trying to reduce prices and actively promote since last year, consumer demand remains sluggish, especially in the low-end market. High inflation has a direct impact on consumer confidence and spending levels.
Because the demand for upstream products has plummeted, the downstream mobile phone supply chain has set off a large-scale destocking campaign since last year. In order to resist the impact of destocking, mobile phone manufacturers have to announce production cuts and reduce shipments to maintain normal operations.
Canalys believes that it is too early to talk about the recovery of overall consumer demand, and the inventory adjustment of the smartphone industry is still in progress.