The growth momentum in global smartphone market will remain weak in 2018 due to lower demand and less replacement purchases, says TrendForce. Faced with continuous rise in the costs of upstream components, downstream mobile phone vendors have to re-consider the pricing or adjust the specification of end-products to cope with the cost pressures. The distribution of market share among the major players is expected to remain generally the same as last year. Therefore, TrendForce estimates the global smartphone production for 2018 at around 1.5 billion units, a 2.8% annual growth only, down from previously expected 5%.

Looking back to global smartphone market in 2017, the sales in 1H17 were weaker than expected since the demand was affected by the anticipated launch of new iPhones in 2H17. In the second half of the year, major smartphone brands put focus on all-screen models, hoping to boost the replacement purchases at the year end, but the sales turned out to be lower than expected. Therefore, since the mid 4Q17, smartphone vendors have lowered their quarterly production plans due to the huge cost pressures brought by excessive inventory.

By: DocMemory
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