Smartphone shipments crash 22% in worst quarter ever, research group says

The smartphone market suffered its worst decline on record in the third quarter, after rising memory costs pushed global shipments down 22 percent year-on-year to 255.3 million units with worse to come, market researcher International Data Corp (IDC) said in a report released on Wednesday.

The higher cost of storage over the past year, led by demand from artificial intelligence industry orders, has hurt profitability across the mobile sector and forced companies to raise prices, cut back specifications and discard budget-focused models, IDC said.

Chinese brands like Xiaomi Corp (小米) and Oppo Mobile Telecommunications Corp (歐珀) took the worst hit among the top names, while Apple Inc and Samsung Electronics Co fared better due to their larger premium handset portfolios, the preliminary data from IDC’s Worldwide Quarterly Mobile Phone Tracker showed.

Newly launched Apple iPhone 18 Pros are displayed at the Apple Store on Fifth Avenue in New York on Sept. 18.

Photo: AP

Device manufacturers are increasingly recognizing that they are facing a permanent structural shift and IDC expects market growth to be constrained through next year and any recovery in growth would not come until 2028 at the earliest, the report said.

As companies increase prices and push consumers toward flagship or high-end models, the long-term trend is seen translating into greater share of a smaller market for Apple and other vendors with large-scale distribution and a premium mix of products, it said.

“Current indicators suggest that the market has not yet reached the bottom,” IDC research director Nabila Popal said. “Memory costs have surged approximately 350 percent since last year and are still rising, creating substantial pressure on vendor margins and shipments. The worst is yet to come.”