Smartphone market suffers setback

According to preliminary data from the Worldwide Quarterly Mobile Phone Tracker from International Data Corporation (IDC), the third quarter of 2022 saw a global fall in smartphone sales of 9.7% year over year to 301.9 million units.

The decline represents the largestever third-quarter decline and the smartphone market's fifth straight quarter of decline as shipments struggle amid weakening global demand and economic uncertainty.

Nabila Popal, research director with IDC's Worldwide Tracker team said, "A majority of the decline came from emerging markets where lack of demand, rising costs, and inflation impacted consumers with lesser disposable incomes. With high inventory coming into the quarter, shipments and orders by OEMs were further reduced in an attempt to deplete inventory. Although Chinese vendors continue to suffer the most, all vendors were impacted, including Samsung and Apple. While Apple is the only vendor to deliver positive growth this quarter, it still faced challenges as its growth was stunted in many markets, including China, due to the poor macroeconomic situation. Looking to 2023, the market's expected recovery, which we continue to believe will happen, will be pushed further into the year. Moreover, we now expect a steeper shipment decline for 2022 and a softer recovery in 2023."

"While Stadia’s approach to streaming games for consumers was built on a strong technology foundation, it hasn’t gained the traction with users that we expected so we’ve made the difficult decision to begin winding down our Stadia streaming service," Stadia VP and GM Phil Harrison wrote in a blog post.