Economic Woes Drag Down Smartphone Shipments in First Quarter

A deteriorating macroeconomic environment layered with Covid-19 outbreaks saw China’s smartphone market contract sharply in the first quarter of 2022, as consumers opted to hold onto their current models for longer.

In the three months through March, smartphone shipments plummeted 29.2% year-on-year to 68.1 million units, according to a report released on Monday by the China Academy of Information and Communications Technology (CAICT), a think tank affiliated with the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology.