Smartphone market to return to pre-pandemic levels in 2022, with 47.5% of models gaining 5G support

The coronavirus pandemic in 2020 is hitting all industries. Smartphone manufacturing was no exception. But the market continues to recover and will return to pre-pandemic levels as early as next year, despite component shortages and other challenges.

What's known

According to Trendforce, the market will ship a total of 1.3 billion smartphones in 2022, an increase of 3.8% over this year. Of those, 47.5% (660 million units) will boast support for fifth-generation mobile networks.

Samsung is expected to maintain its lead with about 20% share of the market with 276 million units shipped. Apple is expected to follow in second place with 243 million smartphones (18%). Xiaomi will increase its shipments by 15.8% (up to 220 million units) compared to 2021 and will control 16% of the market. Smartphones OPPO and Vivo will account for 15% and 11% respectively.

Trendforce forecasts for the next year taking into account the release of a new generation iPhone SE powered by A14 Bionic processor, which will try to Apple to hit the competitors in the middle segment, where currently only iPhone SE (2020) is sold. The main impetus for growth will be the iPhone 14.

Trendforce believes that Samsung, Xiaomi, Apple, OPPO and Vivo will take on five at once 80% of the global smartphone market. Thus, a total of less than 300 million devices will be shipped by the rest of the companies, including Huawei, which alone in 2019 shipped more than 240 million smart phones.

Source: TrendForce