On March 20th, the market research organization Strategy Anaylytics released the global smartphone shipments report for February. Among them, Xiaomi has surpassed Huawei to become the third largest mobile phone manufacturer in the world.
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The above report shows that the outbreak of the new crown epidemic has severely impacted the global smartphone industry. In February 2020, the total shipments were only 62 million units, a year-on-year decrease of 38%, a chain decrease of 39%, and sales of 65 million units.
The Chinese mainland market has been particularly affected. It is estimated that only 6 million smartphones were shipped in February, accounting for less than 10% of the world ’s total, compared to 26% last year. Under the influence of the epidemic, all mobile phone manufacturers were spared and collectively plunged, but the situation was different.
Samsung shipped 18.2 million units that month, down 13% year-on-year, but still ranked first. In recent years, Samsung's mobile phone production has gradually shifted from China to other regions such as Vietnam, which has inadvertently mitigated the impact of the epidemic. For the epidemic, South Korean media reported that Samsung ’s latest flagship smartphone, the Galaxy S20, is expected to sell less than its predecessor, the Galaxy S10, due to backlogs of inventory, which has reduced Samsung ’s demand for S20 components.
Apple continued to rank second with 10.2 million units, a year-on-year decrease of 27%. The delay of Fuji rehabilitation workers has a serious impact on the production and shipment of the iPhone. It is expected to improve by the end of March, but it is unlikely to be "revived", otherwise Apple will not be able to restrict the purchase of the iPhone.
Surprisingly, although Xiaomi's shipments also decreased by 32% year-on-year, it was only 6 million units that month, but it rose to third place. Strategy Anaylytics believes that it is mainly due to Xiaomi's online sales, but the digital overseas market has also contributed a lot to Xiaomi.
Huawei dropped 69% year-on-year to 5.5 million units, slipping to fourth place, and 4G mobile phone inventories affected the market performance. OPPO and vivo continued to rank fifth and sixth, with shipments of 4 million and 3.6 million units respectively.
In total, the six major mobile phone manufacturers, Samsung, Apple, Xiaomi, Huawei, OPPO and vivo, only shipped 47.5 million units in February, a 36% decrease from the previous month, and a 52% decrease from October last year. Lenovo-Motorola, Transsion, LG, and Realme ranked seventh to tenth, respectively, and shipments fell 23-29% in February.
China's mobile phone market shipments may continue to decline
According to the data given by the China Academy of Information and Communication Technology, the total domestic mobile phone market shipments in February 2020 were 6.384 million units, a year-on-year decrease of 56.0%, of which 3.960 million 4G mobile phones and 2.38 million 5G mobile phones. For comparison, data from the China Academy of Information and Communications Technology in January showed that 5G mobile phone shipments were 5.465 million units, which was a half drop compared to February, mainly due to the impact of the epidemic and the user ’s enthusiasm for replacement.
Prior to this, previous reports from market research institutions Canalys, IDC, and Counterpoint showed that the Chinese mobile phone market will face a sharp decline of about 40% year-on-year in the first quarter of this year (the highest decline will reach 50%). In March, if the epidemic situation is under stable control, the overall market will gradually enter a recovery period, but it will still be difficult to recover to the same level last year.
As the impact of the epidemic gradually subsided, market demand began to release after the product rhythm returned to the right track. The market is expected to rebound in the second quarter and the second half of the year, and the domestic mobile phone market is expected to decline by about 4% year-on-year in 2020. However, judging from these reports, the industry's outlook for the mobile phone market in the first half of 2020 tends to be conservative, because the impact of the epidemic does not know when it will end.
The share of online channels under the epidemic will further increase. In the short term, consumers with demand for buying machines will have to choose online channels to purchase machines, and the proportion of online channels will increase significantly in the first quarter of 2020 and in the first half of the year. However, in terms of the actual sales ratio of the Chinese mobile phone market, offline sales of manufacturers such as Huawei, OPPO, vivo, and Apple can account for more than 80% of the overall, so this is why the epidemic will seriously affect the Chinese mobile phone market.
Users' enthusiasm for replacing 5G mobile phones has not been fully released
Regarding the decline in 5G mobile phone shipments, the industry chain said that in addition to the impact of the epidemic, more of the user's enthusiasm for changing phones has not been stimulated.
The industry chain mentioned that, in fact, since the fourth quarter of last year, some domestic mobile phone manufacturers have been busy cleaning up inventory in order to be able to sprint 5G mobile phones. Released completely, and the sale of 4G mobile phones has entered a period when users do not buy it (5G has arrived, 4G mobile phones are considered by many consumers as obsolete products).
Downstream sales have been affected, which directly led to the performance of upstream suppliers. Therefore, how to destock is an important issue for mobile phone manufacturers today, because this not only affects the performance of mobile phone brand manufacturers and new product plans, but also supplies the entire mobile phone The chain generates demand changes. If the inventory control is effective, it is expected that the water level of the entire industry will return to normal in the second quarter, but the period of destocking will inevitably be detrimental to some new product mass production plans and supply chain manufacturers' shipments.
