Commentary
Smartphone Shipments Plunge 38% Due To COVID-19
- by Chuck Martin , Staff Writer, March 23, 2020
The market of connected things is taking at least a short-term hit due to COVID-19.
Global smartphone shipments dropped 38% annually in the month of February, according to a new forecast by Strategy Analytics.
Shipments dropped from 99 million units in February 2019 to 62 million units this past February.
“Smartphone demand collapsed in Asia last month, due to the COVID-19 outbreak, and this dragged down shipments across the world,” stated Linda Sui, director at Strategy Analytics. “Some Asian factories were unable to manufacture smartphones, while many consumers were unable or unwilling to visit retail stores and buy new devices.”
This is the biggest fall in the history of the worldwide smartphone market, according to the research firm.
The coronavirus also is taking its toll on the wearables market, at least from a growth perspective.
That market is now projected to grow 9% this year, reaching 368 million devices shipped, according to the International Data Corporation (IDC).
This follows global shipments of wearable devices growing 89% in 2019.
Although the first half of this year will see slower shipments, they still are projected to reach 527 million units by the end of 2014, growing 9% a year until then.
Watches and wristbands are expected to decline 13% during the first quarter, as factories in China struggle to catch up.
The market may rebound once COVID-19 subsides, but that specific time point is still unknown.
Chuck Martin is Editor of the AI & IoT Daily at MediaPost and writes the daily Connected Thinking column. He is a NY Times Business bestselling author and his latest book is “Digital Transformation 3.0” (The New Business-to-Consumer Connections of The Internet of Things.) He is CEO of Net Future Institute and a frequent keynote speaker internationally. Follow him on Twitter @chuckmartin and contact him at Chuck@MediaPost.com.
My whole family just cycled through COVID 19. Our daughter moved down from her apartment in NY due to her industry being "banned" by Cuomo, and brought COVID with her. All four of us cycled through the "disease" in the past twelve days here in Georgia.
Smartphone shipments didn't plunge 38% "due to COVID-19." That punkass virus doesn't have the power to do that (I've been more sickened by the common cold in my 60 years), but the very desirable (why, I'm not yet sure), sensationalized hysteria attached to the virus is causing EVERYTHING to plunge irrationally.
Numbers don't add up. In the sixteen week flu season of 2017-2018, 80,000 Americans lost their lives to the flu, mainly the elderly, which is the annual, sad way of the thing. Elderly are most vulnerable.
Did anybody bat an eyelash at 80,000 Americans dying from flu two years ago? There were a couple of stories, I recall, primarily because the average number of Americans to lose their lives every year to the common, garden variety version of flu that blows through, and that we invariably come up with a woefully ineffective vaccine for is usually more like 50,000 or 60,000. So, 80,000 was considered to be a high number, compared to 60,000.
But what is up with this hysteria? 80,000 dead Americans two years ago from garden-variety flu virus, and here we are after a few months with the coronavirus in America with only 500 dead and I'm supposed to buy into this ridiculous hysteria?
80,000 Americans killed from flu virus in four months time two years ago, and only 500 Americans killed from coronoaviris in three months time this year? In what parallel universe would even a single person be deluded into believing that the latter is somehow worse than the former?
BOOOOO!
If you're no good at math, and don't recognize that 500 dead from corona are still 79,500 away from 80,000 dead for flu in about the same timeframe then that BOOOOOO may have just caused you to shart your pants. Now go wipe yourself (if you can find a single "spare square" of toilet paper) and GET A GRIP!