Electronics

With rising inflation and the rising cost of daily necessities such as gasoline and food, people are changing their phones less frequently. Various companies are reducing the shipments of mobile phones and the production of their components, and planning for the difficulties they may face in the future. China's international mobile phone trade market may become the key.

Xiaomi, the world's third-biggest smartphone maker after Apple and Samsung Electronics Co., said on Friday that its smartphone shipments fell 26% in the April-June period compared with the same period a year earlier. , revenue from the smartphone business fell 28 percent, or $6.2 billion.

Xiaomi believes that the main reasons include shrinking consumer demand in China, the lockdown management implemented in the quarter due to the epidemic, and the rise in global food and fuel prices.

In the same quarter, global smartphone shipments fell nearly 9 percent from a year earlier to 286 million units, according to research firm International Data Corp. IDC said the market weakness was most pronounced in China, followed by the U.S. and the rest of the world.

IDC analyst Nabila Popal said: "The industry was in a tight supply situation at the beginning of the year, and now it has become a tight demand market."

This slowdown isn't a performance for all mobile phone markets. Sales of smartphones above $900, a segment that includes Samsung's foldable smartphones and Apple's new iPhones, rose more than 20 percent in the first half of this year compared with the same period last year, according to Counterpoint Research. In the first half of this year, only about one in 10 smartphones worldwide were in the premium category, but they accounted for 70% of industry profits, Counterpoint said.