- Apple was forced to shut retail stores, introduced discounts on the iPhone 11 and released a new low-price SE;
- IDC forecasts upcoming 5G deployment to help the recovery of smartphone shipments next year.
Global smartphone shipments will fall nearly 12% to 1.2 billion units in 2020, according to market research firm IDC, as reported by Reuters. The research points out that consumers are spending less due to the economic crisis caused by COVID-19.
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Reuters reports that coronavirus has not only disrupted business supply chains, with major smartphone makers such as Apple and Samsung flagging financial hits, but also squeezed consumer spending worldwide.
Nationwide lockdowns and rising unemployment have reduced consumer confidence and reprioritized spending towards essential goods, directly impacting the uptake of smartphones in the short term
Sangeetika Srivastava, senior research analyst with IDC
With the pandemic, Apple was forced to shut retail stores and introduced discounts on the iPhone 11 in China and released a new low-price SE model to weather a plunge in global smartphone demand.
On the other hand, shipments from China’s factories to vendors rose 17% in April from a year earlier, suggesting signs of an early rebound in domestic demand in the world’s largest smartphone market. Reuters also reports that in China, where the economy has begun to reopen and factories have resumed operations, IDC expects a single-digit decline in this year.
IDC forecasts upcoming 5G deployment to help the recovery of smartphone shipments next year, adding it does not expect growth to return until the first quarter of 2021.
