Global smartphone production is expected to grow at a slower annual rate of 2.5 percent this year due to the sluggish seasonal demand in the first quarter, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and COVID-19-related lockdowns of Chinese cities, market researcher TrendForce Corp (集邦科技) said on Friday.
Production is forecast to reach 1.366 billion units this year, down from the previous estimate of 1.38 billion units, the Taipei-based researcher said in a report.
However, as COVID-19-induced disruptions and semiconductor shortages linger, coupled with concerns about inflation and energy supply, smartphone production might be subject to further downward revisions later, it said.
Photo: AFP
“There are two key observations regarding the effects of the war on the smartphone market: First, brand sales have been suspended or have dropped sharply. Second, the war has exacerbated global inflation, which is strongly affecting energy and food prices in particular, and is rapidly spreading from Europe to the world,” the report said.
Mobile phone sales in Russia and Ukraine jointly account for approximately 3 to 4 percent of the global market, TrendForce data showed.
Eighty-five percent of sales in the two countries are in Russia, with Samsung Electronics Co, Xiaomi Corp (小米) and Apple Inc being the top three brands in the country, the data showed.
Samsung and Apple have announced the suspension of all exports to Russia, and it remains to be seen whether Chinese brands, including Xiaomi and Oppo Mobile Telecommunications Corp (歐珀), would be able to fill the void left by those two global brands in the short term, it said.
“If the war can be brought under control before the end of April, estimated impact on the smartphone market in 2022 will be approximately 20 million units,” the report said.
TrendForce said rising inflation would have an adverse effect on people’s disposable income, which would likely prolong the replacement cycle in the smartphone market.
“Due to inflation’s broad and profound influence, it is not yet possible to determine the extent of its effect on the global smartphone market, but there is indeed a high risk of downward revisions in the future,” the report said.
TrendForce believes that the COVID-19 pandemic remains a key factor to watch for in the smartphone market this year, especially in China, which continues to follow a “zero COVID-19” strategy.
“China, the world’s largest smartphone consumer market, is still adopting a dynamic zero COVID-19 policy. Not only will this policy exacerbate labor and material shortages in the intricate smartphone supply chain, pandemic prevention activities will also throw cold water on demand,” the report said.
As a result, China’s smartphone shipments would decline 7.7 percent annually to 300 million units this year from 325 million units last year, TrendForce said, adding that the possibility of a continued downturn cannot be ruled out.
SECOND-RATE: Models distilled from US products do not perform the same as the original and undo measures that ensure the systems are neutral, the US’ cable said The US Department of State has ordered a global push to bring attention to what it said are widespread efforts by Chinese companies, including artificial intelligence (AI) start-up DeepSeek (深度求索), to steal intellectual property from US AI labs, according to a diplomatic cable. The cable, dated Friday and sent to diplomatic and consular posts around the world, instructs diplomatic staff to speak to their foreign counterparts about “concerns over adversaries’ extraction and distillation of US AI models.” Distillation is the process of training smaller AI models using output from larger, more expensive ones to lower the costs of training a powerful new
Shares of Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) have repeatedly hit new highs, but an equity analyst said the stock’s valuation remains within a reasonable range and any pullback would likely be technical. The contract chipmaker’s historical price-to-earnings (P/E) ratio has ranged between 20 and 30, Cathay Futures Consultant Co (國泰證期) analyst Tsai Ming-han (蔡明翰) told Central News Agency. With market consensus projecting that TSMC would post earnings per share of about NT$100 (US$3.17) this year, supported by strong global demand for artificial intelligence (AI) applications, and the stock currently trading at a P/E ratio of below 25, Tsai said the valuation
The artificial intelligence (AI) boom has triggered a seismic reshuffling of global equity markets, with Taiwan and South Korea muscling past European nations one by one. With its stock market now valued at nearly US$4.3 trillion, Taiwan surpassed the UK, Europe’s biggest market, earlier this month, data compiled by Bloomberg showed. South Korea is about US$140 billion away from doing the same. The tech-heavy Asian markets have shot past Germany and France in the past seven months. The shift is largely down to massive gains in shares of three companies that provide essential hardware for AI: Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電),
The US Department of Commerce last week ordered multiple chip equipment companies to halt shipments of certain tools to China’s second-largest chipmaker, Hua Hong Semiconductor Ltd (華虹半導體), its latest action to slow the country’s development of advanced chips, two people familiar with the matter said. The department sent letters to at least a handful of companies informing them of restrictions on tools and other materials destined for two Hua Hong facilities US officials believe make China’s most sophisticated chips, the people said. Top US chip equipment companies Lam Research Corp, Applied Materials Inc and KLA Corp, each of which has significant
RSS