Smartphone Market Recovered In 2022 To Reach Pre-Pandemic Levels

Research business firm Canalys has published its smartphone marketplace analysis report for 2021. It suggests worldwide smartphone shipments returned to pre-pandemic levels final year. This comes afterward a similar report from another noted inquiry house IDC last week.

Co-ordinate to Canalys, a total of 1.35 billion smartphones were shipped globally last year. That marks a healthy seven percent year-on-twelvemonth (YoY) increment from 1.26 billion shipments in 2020. More importantly, the figure for 2021 is closer to 2019's 1.37 billion units, suggesting that the smartphone manufacture has recovered from an unprecedented slowdown in 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

All major vendors benefitted from a reignited demand for smartphones in 2021. Samsung remained at the top, selling 274.5 million smartphones final yr. This accounts for virtually 20 percentage of the global market. All the same, information technology saw the everyman YoY growth in shipments among the top 5 vendors (seven percentage).

This doesn't come up every bit a surprise though. Chinese firms Xiaomi, Oppo, and Vivo have been giving Samsung a tough time in the marketplace lately. Xiaomi even managed to overthrow the Korean behemoth from the top spot briefly in 2020. While the latter has managed to fend off the competition up to some extent in 2021, it would accept to exist on its toes this yr to retain its crown every bit the "smartphone king."

Needless to say, Xiaomi (28 percent), Oppo (22 percentage), and Vivo (fifteen percentage) were the three fastest-growing smartphone brands last year. They came in third, fourth, and fifth in this league tabular array of superlative five vendors, selling 191.2 million, 145.1 million, 129.ix million smartphones respectively. Apple tree remained at second with an 11 percentage YoY growth. It sold 230.1 million iPhones final year, capturing a 17 percent share in the market.

Apple tree was the biggest smartphone vendor in Q4 2021

Equally has been the trend in recent years, Apple and Samsung swapped positions when it comes to the shipment volume for the fourth quarter last yr. Apple shipped 82.seven 1000000 iPhones in the year-ending quarter compared to Samsung'south lxx.five million units. Yet, the Korean company still has 1 large takeaway here. Its shipments grew 14 percent YoY during this period, much more than Apple'southward one percent.

Even Xiaomi managed to abound only nigh five percent in Q4 2021. Oppo and Vivo, meanwhile, saw their smartphone shipment book subtract vii percent and 11 percent YoY in the last three months of the year. So Samsung had a strong end to 2021. Well, we saw that in its earnings report for last year. The company would now exist hoping to build maintain the momentum in 2022 as it tries to fend off the contest from its Chinese rivals. A lot will depend on the sales of its upcoming Galaxy S22 flagship series. The new devices go official on February 9.