Smartphone Sales Collapse, Apple Holds Its Own

By Douglas A. McIntyre Published May 1, 4:56AM EDT

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Smartphone Sales Collapse, Apple Holds Its Own — © gonzalobaeza / Flickr

Global smartphone sales dove at a record rate. However, Apple Inc (NASDAQ: AAPL | AAPL Price Prediction) iPhone sales held steady as the U.S. company added market share.

Research firm IDC reported a year over year drop across the industry of 11.7% in the first quarter. That translates into shipments of 275.8 million smartphones. Since the smartphone has fundamentally replaced the laptop and tablet among hundreds of millions of people, the figure speaks volumes about the breadth of the decline of GDP across the world. Consumer spending, for example, is two-thirds of GDP.

Samsung, the traditional front runner, posted shipments of 58.3 million. That represents a drop of 18.9%. China-based Huawei posted a drop of 17.1% which represents shipments of 49 million. Since most of the firm’s units are sold in China, it says a great deal about the fall off of consumer spending in the world’s largest nation by populations.

Apple shipped 36.7 million phones, a drop of only .4% from the first quarter of last year. IDC analysts wrote: “This is primarily due to the continued success of its iPhone 11 series. Looking forward, the launch of the recent SE (2020) device targeting the lower-priced segment could work well for the vendor if consumers shift their buying preferences towards more budget-friendly devices in the uncertain economic climate of 2020.”

China-based Xiaomi shipped 29.5 million smartphones, up 6.1%.

China bases vivo shipped 24.8 million, up 7%

Nabila Popal, research director with IDC’s Worldwide Mobile Device Trackers, summed up the situation: “What started as primarily a supply-side problem initially limited to China has grown into a global economic crisis with the demand-side impact starting to show by the end of the quarter.”

Apple has a chance to at least hold its own in the current quarter because of the iPhone SE which has a base price of $399, less than half of the flagship iPhone 11 Pro

About the Author Douglas A. McIntyre →

Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.

McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.

His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.

A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.

TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.

McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.