February phone sales take record y-o-y fall but H2 could see upswing

Author: EIS Release Date: Apr 1, 2020


In February, smartphone shipments were down 38% y-o-y – the biggest fall in the history of the market, says Strategy Analytics.

Units fell from 99.2 million phones in February, 2019, to 61.8 million in February, 2020.

“Despite tentative signs of recovery in China, we expect global smartphone shipments overall to remain weak throughout March, 2020,” says SA’s  Yiwen Wu.

According to TrendForce  Q1 smartphone production will fall by 13.3% y-o-y to 270 million units. In Q2, TrendForce expects about 318 million units to be produced which would be a 7.4% decrease y-o-y. Assuming the  outbreak can be contained by the end of Q2, the demand for smartphones will go into a noticeable upswing in 2H20, says TrendForce. Furthermore, with the release of 5G and multi-camera phones, 2020 global smartphone production is expected to reach 1.35 billion units (pre-outbreak forecast: 1.41 billion), a 3.5% decrease y-o-y. Last week Qualcomm CEO Steve Mollenkopf said that the company’s chipset business in China returned to normal at the beginning of March.