IDC: Smartphone Sales to Shrink with iPhone Least Affected

02 JUNE 2022 - In news that’ll shock no one, shipments of phones are expected to fall this year. That is the prediction of market tracker IDC, according to a piece from CNET. The report says shipments will only hit 1.31 billion units in 2022, a decline of 3.5%.

Apple’s virtual assistant (you know the one) tells me that as of April 2019, the population of the planet was 7.7 billion people. You’re telling me that we’re going to make enough phones for one-out-of-seven people… and that’s too few? I mean, at some point…

An IDC analyst is quoted in the piece, saying:

The smartphone industry is facing increasing headwinds from many fronts: weakening demand, inflation, continued geo-political tensions and ongoing supply chain constraints. However, the impact of the China lockdowns -- which have no clear end in sight -- are far greater…

What does this mean for Apple? Oh, Apple will be fine. Better than others, anyway. Earlier this week we heard from its primary manufacturing partner, Foxconn, that they’re still running full tilt, expecting a better year now than they had previously. While CNET doesn’t comment on Foxconn specifically, the piece does have IDC indicating that:

iPhones will be least affected by the shortage (…) due to Apple having “greater control over its supply chain” and because its higher-end phone customers are less affected by inflation.

IDC’s prediction seems a bit more gloomy than one of its cohorts. Back in April, Strategy Analytics said it also expected smartphone shipments to shrink, but only by 2%. That was before Shanghai’s seemingly endless series of lockdowns. Reasons cited by Strategy Analytics included “geopolitical issues, component shortages, price inflation, exchange rate volatility and COVID disruption,” according to the report.