The smartphone market has shrunk significantly in 2022. This contraction was triggered by the falling consumer demand due to economic conditions. On the other hand, Samsung still finished last year as the leader of the smartphone market. According to the data of the research company Omdia, the global smartphone market in the 4th quarter of 2022 amounted to 301.5 million units. This number is the same as in the third quarter of 2022, but there is a decrease of 15 percent on an annual basis. However, while there was a jump in smartphone shipments in the last quarter of the year, on the contrary, there was a small (0.7 percent) decrease this time.
As expected, most of the phones sold in the last quarter were iPhones. Apple sold 74 million iPhones, up 41.6 percent compared to the previous quarter, but fell 13.3 percent year-on-year. On the Samsung side, the arrows point in the same direction. The company sold 58 million phones in the fourth quarter, down 8.8 percent on a quarterly basis and 15.4 percent on an annual basis.
Overall, 1.2 billion smartphones were shipped in 2022, down 10 percent overall. In the whole of the past year, Samsung did not leave its leadership seat by selling 259 million phones, but it should be said that it experienced a decrease of 4.8 percent. Apple, on the other hand, sold a total of 231 million iPhones, down 1.3 percent. Chinese manufacturers such as Xiaomi, Oppo and Vivo, on the other hand, experienced losses of up to 27 percent and became one of the companies most affected by the industry.