Trendforce posted its latest research on the global smartphone market, revealing a decline in production in the third quarter of 2022. The industry saw 289 million units produced between July and September, which is a 0.9% quarterly decline and 11% YoY.
The “extremely weak” demand was due to companies prioritizing inventory rather than new devices while keeping low production due to “strong global economic headwinds”.
Samsung kept its place as the top manufacturer with 64.2 million units in device production, a slight 3.9% increase from the previous quarter. The Korean maker is scaling back production to push its already manufactured devices and will likely report a decline in production after the next three months.
Apple recorded 50.8 million, a market share of 17.6%. According to TrendForce, this is the strongest production period for Cupertino as the company is ramping up manufacturing to push new iPhones right in time for the holiday period. Expectations for Q4 are every fourth new smartphone out of a factory to be an iPhone.
The rest of the Top 5 is occupied by Xiaomi (including Redmi, Poco, and Black Shark sub-brands) in third, Oppo (including Realme and OnePlus) in fourth, and vivo (plus iQOO) in fifth. Trendforce pointed out that Chinese companies are orienting towards a future with fewer US technologies, as vivo has its own ISP, Xiaomi developed an in-house charging chip, and Oppo has the MariSilicon X NPU.
