The global smartphone market suffered its first decline since 2023 in the first quarter of this year, according to market tracker International Corp Data (IDC), with the memory chip supply crunch and war in Iran likely to elevate costs and constrain growth further.
Apple Inc and Samsung Electronics Co were the only top-five brands to post growth, as each increased shipments by more than 3 percent year-on-year while the overall market fell 4.1 percent, the IDC said on Tuesday.
With roughly a fifth of overall shipments each, the two biggest companies are better positioned to secure long-term supply and handle surging costs than Chinese peers. Rivals from Oppo Mobile Telecommunications Corp (歐珀) to Xiaomi Corp (小米) saw shipments plummet this year, as component and logistical costs surged.
Photo: Qilai Shen, Bloomberg
“We expect the first quarter slowdown to be a mild precursor for what lies ahead in 2026,” IDC analysts led by Nabila Popal said in a report. “In several emerging markets, prices have risen by as much as 40–50 percent, significantly weighing on demand.”
Apple had a strong quarter in China, with its popular iPhone 17 series helping it to 30 percent growth in the world’s biggest smartphone arena. Shenzhen-based Huawei Technologies Co (華為) and Honor Device Co (榮耀) also managed to grow their shipments over the period, with the latter’s overseas expansion helping deliver a 24 percent improvement on the prior year, IDC said. Still, all companies will have to adapt their lineups to account for a memory chip crunch that’s expected to last until the second half of next year.
Counterpoint Research data released last week also found a 6 percent drop in first-quarter shipments, though it placed Apple ahead of Samsung in the market-share rankings. Both market-tracking firms pinned the blame primarily on the impact of surging memory costs.
Beside more expensive parts and materials, smartphone brands also face higher shipping costs due to conflict in the Middle East, and many are now reorganizing their spending, Popal said. That includes lowering the specifications of certain models and cutting back on marketing and support for distributors, which is limiting growth, she said.
Taiwanese firms have increased investment in the Philippines in recent years as Manila’s ties with Washington deepen and global supply chains continue to shift away from China, an expert at the Chung-Hua Institution for Economic Research (CIER, 中華經濟研究院) said yesterday. The Philippines had not been among Taiwanese investors’ top choices in Southeast Asia, CIER Taiwan ASEAN Studies Center director Kristy Hsu (徐遵慈) said at a seminar in Taipei. However, Taiwan’s investment in the country has grown significantly since the COVID-19 pandemic, reaching US $257 million last year, a high in recent years, she said. Although Taiwan’s total investment in the Philippines still lags
Intel Corp regards Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) as a longstanding partner, as the US chipmaker would continue outsourcing production of advanced chips to TSMC, Intel chief executive officer Lip-Bu Tan (陳立武) said yesterday. “I don’t look at people as competitors. I look at the collaboration... Nvidia is also, you know, a good friend,” Tan told a news conference following his keynote speech at the Computex trade show in Taipei. “It’s a very trusted partnership for us... We are a big, top customer for them, and we’re going to continue doing that,” he said, referring to TSMC, the world’s largest foundry
Hon Hai Precision Industry Co (鴻海精密) yesterday said it would work with US chipmaker Intel Corp to jointly develop and deploy next-generation artificial intelligence (AI) infrastructure and intelligent computing platforms in a move to capture booming demand for AI computing systems. Hon Hai, also known as Foxconn Technology Group (富士康), said in a statement that the partnership would combine its global manufacturing scale, system integration expertise and AI data center deployment capabilities with Intel’s strengths in processor architecture, silicon technologies and software ecosystem. The companies said they plan to work on equipment used in AI data centers, including server racks powered by
Artificial intelligence (AI) agents would supplant smartphones as the center of people’s digital lives, fundamentally reshaping personal devices and driving a major computing upgrade cycle, Qualcomm Inc CEO Cristiano Amon said yesterday. In his keynote speech for this year’s Computex trade show in Taipei, Amon said that the rise of "agentic AI" — AI systems capable of reasoning, planning and carrying out tasks autonomously — would transform how people interact with technology across phones, PCs, vehicles and wearable devices. Describing the technology as the next major evolution in computing, Amon said that "2026 is the year of agents.” For decades, smartphones have sat
RSS