Worldwide smartphone shipments will drop for the first time in the first quarter of this year due to inventory pressures and consumers’ anticipation of new products, local research firm TrendForce Corp (集邦科技) said.
“Smartphone makers ramped up fourth-quarter shipments as a means to fulfill 2013 sales targets, which led to mounting pressures related to inventory digestion,” TrendForce Corp said, projecting a quarterly decline of 5.1 percent.
It will mark the first negative growth for the devices, the firm said in a research note.
Worldwide smartphone shipments reached 265 million units in the last quarter of last year, up 6.5 percent from the third quarter and 32.2 percent from the same period the previous year, the firm said.
For all of last year, global smartphone shipments increased by an estimated 33.5 percent to about 945 million units, TrendForce said.
In addition to front-runners Apple Inc and Samsung Electronics Co, Sony Corp and LG Electronics Inc will be “the two noteworthy dark horses” this year, the firm said.
Due to its increased efforts in smartphones and hardware components, Sony has seen “a period of noticeable growth” since the first quarter of last year, TrendForce said.
The total numbers of smartphones shipped by Sony reached an estimated 12 million units in the last quarter, up 1.6 percent from the previous quarter and 62 percent from the previous year, it said.
LG seems to be able to continue benefiting from Google’s Nexus orders this year, it said.
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