Samsung

Samsung will reportedly produce 30 million fewer smartphones this year

Ben Schoon | May 27 2022 - 8:16 am PT

Samsung is the biggest smartphone manufacturer on the planet, but it’s not immune to the pressure that the entire market has been feeling. A new report this week claims that Samsung is preparing to cut its production forecasts, with as many as 30 million fewer smartphones produced in 2022.

Korean publication Maeil Economic Daily reports that Samsung has notified its partners of cuts to smartphone production for the remainder of 2022. Initially, Samsung planned to produce around 310 million smartphones during 2022, but that has been cut down to around 280 million devices.

Notably, this news comes just a day after Bloomberg reported that Apple wouldn’t increase production this year, with plans to produce 220 million iPhones this year. Market forecasts had expected around 240 million units this year.

Samsung and Apple have roughly the same reasons for their conservative production schedules this year. Samsung cites the continued rising inflation as a key reason for lessening production, especially as that influences consumer spending on new products. Further, the ongoing shortage of chips and other components continues to affect everyone from Samsung to Apple, and limits production accordingly. And finally, uncertainty around the war in Ukraine and the subsequent economic issues in Russia have affected the market.

Just last month, Strategy Analytics reported that Samsung had 24% of the global smartphone market, the company’s highest Q1 performance in over five years. But that came as smartphone shipments had fallen by 11% year-over-year. In that report, much of the success was attributed to the strong demand for the Galaxy S22 series, as a director at Strategy Analytics explains:

We estimate Samsung shipped 75 million smartphones and topped the global smartphone market with a healthy 24% share in Q1 2022. It is the vendor’s highest first quarter performance by market share since 2017. Demand was strong for the newly launched flagship Galaxy S22 series, especially the higher-priced S22 Ultra model.

The report from Maeil Economic Daily cites analysts who expect Samsung to see “sluggish” sales of low to mid-range smartphones in particular, amid the market struggles. Under 10% of Samsung’s new forecast is made up of foldables, with the Galaxy Z Flip 4 and Galaxy Z Fold 4 being the company’s most notable launches on the schedule for later this year.