Ad wars for the smartphone market drivers#
Hence, the leading growth drivers will come from both cyclical replacement demand and new demand from emerging markets. Not only is smartphone demand expected to decline in China, which represents the largest consumer market in the world, but other markets will also exhibit only limited growth. Much like other Chinese brands, Honor adopts a sales strategy that primarily focuses on the Chinese market, meaning Honor’s smartphone business will continue to affect OPPO, Xiaomi, and Vivo, all of which place a top priority on domestic sales.Īnnual smartphone production for 2022 will likely reach 1.381 billion units despite potential declineĪssuming that the global spread of the COVID-19 pandemic continues to slow, TrendForce expects annual smartphone production for 2022 to undergo a slight YoY increase of 3.6% to 1.381 billion units. It should also be pointed out that Honor, which was spun off from Huawei in early 2021 and underwent a period of corporate restructuring and component procurement in 1H21, experienced a meteoric rise in 2H21. As these three Chinese brands’ target markets and product strategies show significant overlap, their control of key components that are currently in shortage will have a direct impact on their production volumes going forward. Fifth-ranked Vivo (including iQoo), on the other hand, reduced its smartphone production by 11.8% QoQ to 30 million units.
Xiaomi (including Redmi, POCO, and Black Shark) took fourth place with a production of 45.5 million units, a 2.2% QoQ increase. OPPO (including Realme and OnePlus) took third place in the ranking with a quarterly production of 48 million units, a 5.9% QoQ decrease, for 4Q21. For the ranking of smartphone brands by annual production, Samsung was still the leader for 2021 with 275 million units. But apart from that quarter, Samsung’s performance remained stable for the other three quarters of last year. In 2Q21, the spread of COVID-19 outbreaks in Vietnam affected smartphone production facilities in the country and lowered Samsung’s capacity utilization rate. Samsung took second place in the global brand ranking for 4Q21 with 71 million units, a 2.9% QoQ increase. The growth was mainly attributed to an expansion of Apple’s market share in China from 10% to 16%. In terms of annual production, Apple reached 233 million units for 2021, up from almost 200 million units for 2020. Over time, the orders for Huawei’s flagship models (i.e., the P and Mate series) have been gradually replaced by iPhone orders. Moreover, the capturing of the market share left by Huawei can be considered as the main factor behind Apple’s stellar performance in 4Q21.
In the aspect of pricing strategy, the prices of the new iPhone 13 models were reasonable for consumers, while the price reductions for the older iPhone models were noticeable as well. Besides maintaining its top position in the fourth-quarter brand ranking, Apple raised its quarterly iPhone production to a new record high of 85.5 million units, a 66.0% QoQ increase. Owing to its fast-paced sales and marketing rhythms, Apple has been able to take first place in the quarterly ranking of smartphone brands by production market hare for many fourth quarters, and 4Q21 was no exception.
Ad wars for the smartphone market series#
Hence, the total smartphone production for 4Q21 was slightly lower compared with 4Q20 or even 4Q19.Īpple took production leadership in 4Q21 with record high of 85.5 million unitsĪfter unveiling the iPhone 13 series in September, Apple started aggressively ramping up the shipments of these new devices to meet market demand. On the other hand, the performances of a few smartphone brands were constrained by the shortage of some key components. Apple’s new iPhones were the primary growth driver. These factors thus bolstered smartphone production and resulted in 4Q21 seeing the highest QoQ growth rate for the year. The second half of last year saw demand injections related to the peak promotion season for e-commerce platforms and year-end holiday sales.
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