Samsung would have decided to reduce its production of smartphones, an opportunity for Apple.
Samsung is the world leader in the smartphone market (if annual shipments are taken into account) and the Korean giant has retained this status despite the COVID-19 crisis, component shortages, and the success of the iPhone 13 and iPhone 12.
However, a new rumor suggests that this year the gap between the number of smartphones shipped by Samsung and iPhone shipments may narrow, due to macroeconomic conditions.
Samsung would have decided to ship fewer smartphones than expected
In a recent article, The Elec explains that Samsung originally planned to produce 334 million smartphones and ship nearly 300 million this year. But finally, the Korean giant would have revised its forecasts and now the objective would be to ship 260 million.
This would be less than the 270 million smartphones shipped in 2021, but more than the 250 million shipped in 2020. The Elec also clarifies that before the pandemic, Samsung shipped more or less 300 million smartphones per year and explains that the Korean giant had planned to return to these pre-pandemic performances.
Unfortunately, Samsung would be forced to revise its targets due to inflation, supply chain problems, and lower-than-expected demand, according to sources cited by the Korean media.
Of course, as usual, this information should be considered with caution. But in any case, the decline in smartphone production at Samsung could reduce the gap between it and its biggest rival, Apple. Indeed, the latter is more resistant to crises and while the iPhone 12 and iPhone 13 are a hit, the Cupertino company is now preparing to launch the iPhone 14 series in September.
Since Apple focuses on high-end products, it is possible that it will be less affected by the macroeconomic context compared to Samsung, which offers both premium models and more affordable devices with its Galaxy A and Galaxy M ranges.
Apple should better resist the crisis, thanks to its high-end positioning
In June, the company IDC predicted a 3.5% drop in smartphone shipments worldwide in 2022. It also mentioned the lesser impact that this drop would have on Apple.
Lockdowns have hit global demand and supply simultaneously by reducing demand in the world’s largest market and tightening the bottleneck of an already strained supply chain“,
explained Nabila Popal, research director at IDC, in June.
As a result, many OEMs have reduced their orders for this year, including Apple and Samsung. However, Apple appears to be the least impacted vendor due to better control over its supply chain and because the majority of its customers in the high-price segment are less influenced by macroeconomic issues like inflation.
In addition, as Apple is planning a shower of new features on the iPhone 14 series, in particular for the iPhone 14 Pro and the iPhone 14 Pro Max, the firm could switch a lot of users from Android to iOS. As a reminder, according to rumors, Apple plans to equip the iPhone 14 Pro and iPhone 14 Pro Max with a 48-megapixel camera. These two models could also have more RAM memory and on the front, we would finally be entitled to a design without a notch.
And when it comes to the operating system, iOS 16 (which will be released at the same time as the iPhone 14) also looks very convincing. Moreover, recently, we relayed a survey according to which more than 25% of Android users would be ready to abandon the operating system of Google to switch to that of Apple.
TechAint 