Global Smartphone Shipments to Decline 3.5% in 2022, Apple to Be Least Impacted

Global smartphone shipments are expected to decline 3.5 percent to 1.31 billion units in 2022, according to IDC's latest Worldwide Quarterly Mobile Phone Tracker forecast. Because of increasing challenges with supply and demand, IDC is significantly reducing its forecast for 2022, which previously predicted 1.6 percent growth.

IDC believes Apple will be the "least impacted vendor" because of its control over its supply chain and because iPhone customers are in the higher-priced segment and are not as impacted by macroeconomic issues like inflation.

Weakening demand, inflation, supply chain constraints, and geo-political tensions are impacting all smartphone vendors, resulting in cutbacks. Even major smartphone manufacturers like Samsung and Apple have cut orders. IDC says that it expects the challenges to ease by the end of the year, barring any new setbacks. The 2023 market is expected to recover with 5 percent growth.

Semiconductor supply issues are also expected to ease in the second half of 2022.

"The ongoing semiconductor supply issues will ease up in the second half of 2022. On the SoC side, 4G SoC supply has been tight, but the market continues to shift towards 5G SoCs," said Phil Solis, research director in IDC's Enabling Technologies and Semiconductors team. "The bigger problem has been the tight supply of components such as PMICs, display drivers, and discrete Wi-Fi chips. Capacity is being increased for these semiconductors that are made in higher process nodes and newer versions of Wi-Fi chips are being made with newer process nodes. At the same time, demand is dropping. Combined, these supply and demand changes will put the market more in equilibrium."

Apple in the second fiscal quarter of 2022 had difficulty meeting demand for the current ‌iPhone‌, iPad, and Mac models because of supply constraints, and the company said in April that it expects those issues to continue into the third fiscal quarter. At the current time, the Mac and ‌iPad‌ appear much more affected by supply chain issues than the ‌iPhone‌.

Recent rumors have suggested that the ‌iPhone‌ 14 Max is several weeks behind schedule compared to the other ‌iPhone‌ 14 models due to supply chain issues, but Apple analyst Ming-Chi Kuo has said that Apple has the situation under control and suppliers are going to be able to work overtime to watch up. Whether or not these supply issues result in delays or fewer iPhones available for purchase in September remains to be seen.