In the smartphone world, things aren’t looking good. Long before SARS-CoV-2 arrived, the industry was on the verge of collapsing. The glory days of expanding markets and bi-annual upgrades appear to be over, and two years of financial hardships and supply chain bottlenecks have just added to the problem.
It’s not unexpected that firms are cutting back on production for all of these reasons. According to a new claim from Maeil Business News in South Korea, the world’s biggest smartphone manufacturer Samsung would reduce manufacturing by 30 million devices by 2022.
The announcement comes as the turmoil in Ukraine continues to stymie sales. Sales in Russia were halted in March, following in the footsteps of rival IT giants Microsoft and Apple.
Apple has been suffering as well. According to recent Bloomberg sources, Apple is scaling back plans to produce an additional 20 million iPhones in 2022.
Instead, starting in 2021, its numbers are expected to remain flat. Those figures come after several quarters of iPhone sales that defied many of the industry’s macro tendencies, but the business may be settling back down, even with the iPhone 14 on the way.
We’ve arrived at this point thanks to a perfect storm of industrial and global circumstances. The biggest manufacturers should not be concerned; they will very definitely emerge undamaged from the downturn.
However, there are lingering concerns about the industry’s future. The main question is whether this is a slowdown after a decade of record-breaking smartphone sales, or whether new technology like foldable screens will be enough to ignite a comeback to the mobile golden age.
To read our blog on “Samsung processors built just for the Galaxy could take their sweet time to arrive,” click here.
