News Briefing

 

According to the forecast report released by IDC in early December, the extent of the decline in global smartphone shipments should increase by 2.6% to 9.1% in 2022, whereas shipments will rebound to 1.273 billion units in 2023, a slight increase of 2.8%.

 

Impact Analysis

 

According to data illustration, the global smartphone market in the first half of 2023 continues to be full of challenges, and this context will only begin to improve by the middle of the year. In the second half of the year, sales in most regions of the world will start to return to positive growth. However, it’s expected that global smartphones will only have a mild growth of 2.8% in 2023, with the growth for Android and iOS reaching 3.1% and 1.3% respectively. Besides, the sales of 5G mobile phones will account for about half of the total in 2022, and it’s estimated that the penetration rate will increase to 80% by 2026.

 

In the first three quarters of 2022, the application of Taiwan’s PCB industry on communication accounted for 32%, while the proportion should have reached almost 40%, including the substrate of mobile phone applications. Amongst them, the outstanding sales generated from iPhones is recognized as the crucial factor that has triggered the output value growth of mobile phone applications. However, it’s worth noting that the growth momentum of iOS and Android will tend to be consistent from 2023, based on the forecast data by IDC so there won’t be such developments. Apple has continued to outperform its competitors within the overall mobile phone market in recent years. In other words, changes in the output value of PCB communication applications in Taiwan will be closer to the growth and decline of the overall mobile phone market. As viewed, even if the overall mobile phone shipments should persistently sustain positive growth in 2023, the effect of the specification bonus will be weakened as a matter of course. Fortunately, there’s still a lot of room for improvement in the penetration rate of 5G, which can somehow make up for the related negative impacts.