We have been expecting some market strangeness thanks to the lovely chap spending time in everyone’s heads these day: COVID-19. Expectation has become reality now, as the number-crunchers over at Strategy Analytics have got figures for us concerning smartphone shipments in February 2020. It’s… not fantastic.

Going global, in reverse

World smartphone shipments have fallen right off a bloody cliff. It’s nowhere near Sasol levels of shafted but it’s not great either. Global smartphone shipments have dropped 38% across the board. And lest you let South Africa’s education department convince you that a figure in the 30-percents isn’t such a bad thing, that means shipments fell from 99.2 million units in February 2019 to just 61.8 million units this past month. That’s a fall of 37 million units, and that’s if we’re being generous.

Neil Mawston, Strategy Analytics’ executive director, said “February 2020 saw the biggest fall ever in the history of the worldwide smartphone market. Supply and demand of smartphones plunged in China, slumped across Asia, and slowed in the rest of the world. It is a period the smartphone industry will want to forget.”

And the outlook for March 2020 isn’t looking a whole lot better. China may be recovering from COVID-19 but the rest of us are busy locking down in preparation for the storm. Smartphone sales figures are set to get worse before they get better. But they will get better, so there’s that.

Source: Strategy Analytics