Samsung remained the largest smartphone manufacturer in the first quarter

The latest data from the International Data Society show that Samsung remained the largest smartphone seller in the first quarter of 2022, as the South Korean manufacturer shipped 73.6 million handsets in the first three months of the year. That represents a 1.2% year-over-year decline in Q1 shipments for the company with a global market share of 23.4%. Behind Samsung in second place is… you get the idea! Apple.

Samsung and Apple outperformed the competition in Q1 2022

The US-based company sold 56.5 million iPhones from January to March, resulting in 18% of the global smartphone pie for Apple. Unlike Samsung, Apple was able to achieve an annualized gain of 2.2% in shipments, making the company the only company to show year-over-year growth in smartphone shipments in the first three months of the year. .

Samsung was the world’s leading smartphone manufacturer in the first quarter

Returning to the list, IDC . shows Xiaomi is in third place after shipping 39.9 million phones in the first quarter. That gave the company a market share of 12.7% over the period. Oppo and Vivo were fourth and fifth in the first quarter of 2022 with 27.4 million and 25.3 million shipments, respectively. Both companies saw a year-over-year drop in their shipments for the quarter, with Oppo’s shipments falling 27% and Vivo’s 28%.

Oppo’s market share in the first quarter was 8.7%, while Vivo’s was 8.1%. Other unnamed manufacturers had 91.4 million shipments. The IDC reports that worldwide smartphone shipments fell 8.9% year-on-year in the first quarter. It is now three consecutive quarters of declining supplies for the industry. In the first quarter of this year, 314.1 million units were shipped, 3.5% less than the researcher predicted for the February quarter.

In the first quarter of last year, 344.7 million smartphones were shipped worldwide, meaning more than 30 million phones shipped during the first quarter of this year.

IDC’s research director Nabila Popal blames the current battle on supply chain problems for key components for making smartphones. Consumer demand, she says, has been hurt by economic question marks and global inflation, which has reduced demand for handsets. She says: “While some decline was expected in the first quarter due to ongoing delivery and logistics challenges and a tough year-over-year comparison, things looked like things were deteriorating.”

IDC Says Consumers Worry About Rising Inflation And Economic Instability Decreasing Demand For Phones

She adds: “Consumer confidence in all regions, especially China, is generally negative, with major concerns over inflation and economic instability that have dampened consumer spending. This is now accompanied by rising costs of components and transportation and the “Recent lockdowns in Shanghai, exacerbating an already difficult situation. Added to this is the Russian invasion of Ukraine, which immediately hit that region and continues on an unknown trajectory. Given all these uncertainties, most OEMs are pursuing a more conservative growth strategy for 2022.”

Ryan Reith, Program Vice President, Worldwide Mobile Device Trackers for IDC, says the demand slump is temporary and that once the economy stabilizes, demand for smartphones will pick up again. He notes: “It goes without saying that the world still faces numerous challenges, be it geopolitical, pandemic-related or macroeconomic. Nearly everything that has happened in recent months has counteracted the smartphone market, and realistically many other technology segments.”

Reith adds that Samsung and Apple outperformed the competition because they were able to navigate the supply chain better than the competition. Meanwhile, not much has changed from the first quarter of 2021 to the first quarter of 2022. The top five manufacturers in the first quarter of 2022 were the same five last year, even holding the same position each company held last year.