And it is that after chaining a series of quarters down, with year-on-year that have fallen by double digits, we are now seeing how the market little by little has signs of recovering.
The mid-range will promote recovery
Analysts from some of the main consultancies, such as IDC or Canalys, predict that the mid-range will drive sales of smartphones in the coming months. And that after having seen their sales fall to a minimum, it seems that the manufacturers are fine-tuning the shot and offering what consumers really expect. Because it seems that they are adjusting margins and adapting the configurations to offer mid-range phones at competitive prices and that do not give up the best features. And it will be this segment that precisely pulls sales up again.
With a much more punished domestic economy, manufacturers are working to offer devices for consumers with limited purchasing powerand that is where this market is expected to recover over the coming months, leaving behind the numbers of the disastrous 2022. Added to this is a lower price of device components, which has been dragged down precisely by lower demand all contribute to cheaper and more attractive devices for consumers.
Excess stock, the biggest threat
According to these analysts, the great challenge faced by manufacturers is the large stocks that they have immobilized due to the reduction in sales during the past year. Giants like Samsung have seen good numbers in the sale of smartphones in the first quarter of the year, especially dragged down by their new range tops. But like Samsung, the rest of the manufacturers will have to deal with those excess stockswhich are the ones that threaten to ruin the balance sheets of the following quarters.
It is estimated that the turbulence will continue for at least the next six months, but that the waters will return to normal during the last quarter of the year. That is when the market could begin to recover and chain several positive quarters after the disastrous quarters of 2022. In fact, it is expected that these growth in the last quarter reaches double digitswhich would be extraordinary news for the sector.
And it is that little by little the crisis generated by the war in Ukraine, the scarcity of energy and the inflationary spiral are expected to moderate at the end of the year and during 2024. All this will obviously help to improve the behavior of the market of smartphones, which if everything goes as predicted, will be recovered after chaining the worst quarters of recent times for the sector. So we’ll probably see more mid-range at more competitive prices and with very well-equipped technical sheets, something that we have begun to verify in recent days with especially attractive mobile phones in this range.