By Miranda Li
Mobile phone shipments and sluggish inventory consumption so far in 2022 point to a gloomy prospect for the smartphone industry, likely to reduce demands for related semiconductors and components, according to TF International Securities analyst Kuo Mingchi.
Kuo posted on social media that China’s major Android mobile phone makers have cut their 2022 shipment forecast by about 170 million units so far, 20% of the original shipment plan. Seventy percent of these cut orders are planned to use MediaTek chips.
The slashing of orders was due to the lack of consumer confidence and the weak smartphone demands. There was possibly another drop in sales in the coming months. This is the case with the global, not just the Chinese market, Kuo emphasized.
According to Nikkei Asia news, the chairman of TSMC also acknowledged that both the current global geopolitical uncertainty and the bounce of the coronavirus epidemic have slowed down the market development of consumer electronics products.
The situation is consistent with the information from the China Academy of Information and Communications Technology. Its data shows that the shipment of mobile phones in the Chinese market from January to February 2022 totaled 47.886 million units, a year-on-year decrease of 22.6%, of which 5G mobile phone shipment was 37.698 million units, a year-on-year decrease of 11%.
Kuo also revealed that Apple planned to reduce the shipments of its 2022 launched iPhone SE 3 from 25~30 million to 15~20 million, a more than 30% drop because of lower-than-expected demands.
The downtrend in the consumer electronics industry is reflected in the supply chain. The shipment of mobile phone filters has been affected to a certain extent. A veteran in the mobile phone industry chain told JW Insights bluntly that the unit price of all components in the whole camera module for mobile phones has dropped, especially in mobile phone lenses, bringing about the price drop in filter products.
A filter can be used to eliminate the influence of infrared light on imaging and is an essential component of camera modules. The mobile phone lens manufacturer is the downstream market for the filter.
In earlier years, mobile phone camera manufacturers desperately expanded production under the continuous penetration of multi-camera modules adopted in mobile phones. As the demand weakened, related suppliers competed fiercely to seize the limited orders, causing the unit price to decrease and squeezing profit margins.
