The mobile device market is massive – in 2021 there were 1.7 billion shipments worth $545 billion and an installed base of 3.7 billion. Growth in the year was 25% in spending and 8% in shipments, although the installed base didn’t grow. The number of non-Internet enabled basic phones and audio devices continued to shrink, highlighted by Apple’s recent withdrawal of its iPod.My Figure above shows my unit shipment forecast by type to 2025. It shows the growth of tablets and smart wearables and the continued dominance of smart phones. It is likely that some new device types will be introduced as well, but it’s impossible to say what they will be.
Mobile device shipments are far higher in Asia Pacific than the Americas or EMEA, reflecting the much higher population density there. The latter two regions demonstrate the maturity of the market, where Africa and South America have failed to make up for the saturation of the US, Canada and most Western European countries.
Like most other global ITC markets, there has been massive vendor consolidation in the mobile device market. I show 2021 market shares in my Figure above for revenue (form factor and vendor views) and units (vendors only). It demonstrates the dominance of Apple and Samsung, which accounted for around 70% of spending and 40% of shipments in the year.
The globalization of the market has also had a distinctive effect on the nationality of mobile device suppliers. Chinese vendors suffered from US government sanctions and supply-chain problems in 2020, while Apple (the only significant American vendor) took up the slack created. Shipments from South Korean companies have fallen slightly every year since 2014, while European manufacturers had completely withdrawn from the market by 2018, although ARM, Nokia and Ericsson continue to play significant roles in the market
The vast – and increasing – majority of mobile devices are manufactured in China and other Asian countries with low average salaries. Eventually it’s likely that ‘labour price arbitrage’ will be replaced by ‘automation price arbitrage’ – freeing up the ability of new countries to become major manufacturers. Threatening the market is the increasing scarcity and growing prices of components and materials used to make mobile devices, which has been made far worse by the pandemic and the invasion of Ukraine by Russia.
Information Technology and Communications research
