Chip scarcity sees smartphone gross sales fall 6.8%

In a nutshell: World smartphone gross sales have been down 6.8% within the third quarter of the yr, however the stoop wasn’t attributable to falling demand: blame the chip disaster. It was a optimistic Q3 for Apple, although, which has moved forward of Xiaomi to take the second-largest market share behind chief Samsung.

The info comes from Gartner’s newest market intelligence report. The analysis firm notes that the depressingly acquainted drawback of the chip scarcity has seen smartphone gross sales to end-users fall 6.8% year-on-year.

“Regardless of sturdy shopper demand, smartphone gross sales declined attributable to delayed product launches, longer supply schedule and inadequate stock on the channel,” mentioned Anshul Gupta, senior analysis director at Gartner. “Provide constraints impacted the manufacturing schedule of fundamental and utility smartphones rather more than premium smartphones.”

Gartner specifies radio frequency and energy administration built-in circuits as short-supply elements that delayed manufacturing and impacted gross sales. There was, nevertheless, excellent news for cellphone corporations as premium handsets grew in recognition all through the quarter regardless of general gross sales declining.

Trying on the prime 5, Samsung retained its place at primary with 69 million gross sales regardless of seeing its market share drop 1.9% YoY. The Korean agency was helped by sturdy demand for its Galaxy Z Fold 3 and Galaxy Z Flip 3 units.

Apple (48 million) was barely forward of Xiaomi (44 million). Gartner writes that upgrades within the iPhone 13 line, such because the bionic A15 sensor and digital camera, mixed with Apple’s trade-in packages helped spur gross sales. Xiaomi, in the meantime, continued its growth in Europe and the Center East.

Fourth place Vivo noticed the most important yearly progress with a 20.9% rise to 36 million. The third Chinese language producer on the record, OPPO, took the fifth place with 33 million gross sales.

Whereas final yr’s lockdowns gave smartphone gross sales a lift, a lot of the Q3 2021 decline might be attributed to the chip disaster, which is affecting just about each digital shopper product (and automobile) on the market, from more and more costly graphics playing cards to consoles. It’s even led to some producers promoting gaming PCs with out devoted GPUs.

Picture credit score: bodnar.photograph