Smart phone market, looking forward to a rebound!
According to the latest report, China's smartphone market shipments in 2022 recorded the biggest year-on-year decline in history, falling below 300 million after 10 years. The market cares, will 2023 be good?
The reporter interviewed the listed companies of the smart phone industry chain and the industry research institutions to learn that the listed companies show their abilities to face the challenges of the industry. Institutions are expected to 2023 China's smartphone market will be slightly year-on-year growth, high-end, differentiation trend is still the main line of the market.
Shipments in China's smartphone market fell the most in history last year
On January 29th IDC, an international data firm, released its quarterly mobile tracking report. About 72.92 million units were shipped in China's smartphone market in the fourth quarter of 2022, down 12.6 percent year on year, according to the report. For the whole year of 2022, China's smartphone market shipped about 286 million units, down 13.2 percent year-on-year, the largest decline ever. For the first time in 10 years, the Chinese smartphone market has once again dropped below 300 million shipments.
Guo Tianxiang, a senior analyst at IDC China, said the main reasons for the continued decline in China's smartphone market are what the industry has known all along: market saturation and longer replacement cycles; Technology development encountered bottleneck, new product innovation is insufficient; 5G's push has fallen short of expectations, with a lack of new "killer" apps; Product quality is getting better and better, performance excess and other factors.
Archie Zhang, an analyst at tech research firm Counterpoint, told reporters that smartphone sales in China had fallen for five consecutive years, with both long-term and short-term factors. In the long run, China's smartphone market will evolve from an explosive emerging market to a mature market. In the short term, it is still related to consumer confidence and income expectations in the economic environment.
In fact, some of these industry factors are also the common challenges facing the global consumer electronics market. Even India, an emerging market, saw its 2022 smartphone shipments decline 9 percent year on year amid a weak global consumer electronics market in 2022.
Industrial chain listed companies face challenges
As can be seen from the performance preforecasts successively disclosed by listed companies, many smart phone industry chain companies will be significantly affected by the industry boom in 2022. However, the reporter learned, along the grasp of the industry chain segmentation area growth space, hold Apple "thigh", flexible adjustment of product structure and other directions, the industry listed companies choose to face challenges.
In response to the question about the future Development of the market on the investor interactive platform, Zhuo Shengwei said that from a long-term perspective, there is still a large market scale for smartphone RF devices. According to the statistics of Yole Development (semiconductor market research institute), the total market scale of RF front-end will exceed 25 billion US dollars by 2025. The current market share of the company's products is still low, there is a large space for development.
Donny Electronics told reporters that the company's main consumer electronic components customer is Apple, its overall situation is better, and the company to Apple supplies relatively niche products, generally less affected.
Wen Tai Technology officials told reporters bluntly that even if the smartphone market is still weak in 2023, the company has adjusted its product mix especially since last year, adding business categories such as automotive electronics and notebook computers. "Many of its technologies or products are generic, and the company is strategically flexible and dynamic."
There are high-end and differentiated opportunities in the market
"We think the Chinese smartphone market will grow slightly year on year in 2023." Zhang said smartphone demand will recover from 2022 as the impact of the pandemic dissipates. However, although there is a certain need to support smartphone consumption, many domestic consumers still have a certain luxury consumption color, the extent of demand recovery still depends on the economic environment, income expectations to improve.
In terms of market opportunities, Zhang Qi believes that as China's smartphone market is transformed into a mature market, it is expected that the market will still focus on two main lines of high-end and differentiation in 2023. High-end smartphones have relatively high profits and conform to the overall trend of consumption upgrading in China, which is still the focus of all manufacturers.
"In terms of differentiation, foldable phones will bring vitality and highlights to the market with more products, lower prices and fiercer competition." Zhang Qi said.
A recent Counterpoint report on foldable phones estimates that global foldable phone shipments will grow 52% to 22.7 million units in 2023, a much higher growth rate than the market as a whole. The report highlights that while the overall size is small, foldable phones are significant in the key ultra-premium segment ($1,000 or 7,000 yuan and above), which is expected to reach more than 20% of the market by 2023.
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