Samsung is having a bad year, with total 2023 smartphone sales likely to fall well below target
This may sound odd to anyone the least bit familiar with the global smartphone vendor ranking nowadays, but Samsung's sales numbers are expected to go from bad to worse this year. Yes, this is still the world's largest handset manufacturer as of both the end of 2022 and Q1 2023, but its evolution is by no means positive, as evidenced by virtually the smallest of victories over arch-rival Apple during the January - March timeframe.
Samsung's first-quarter shipment figures were substantially down from the same period last year, and despite the apparent early success of the Galaxy S23 trio, things will not look radically different in Q2 either. Not according to the latest "industry" projections, that is, which put the company's April - June 2023 total at around 55 million units, compared to 61.5 million during the previous three months and 62.5 million in the second quarter of 2022.
Looking further ahead, analysts expect Galaxy smartphone sales scores to end up somewhere between 230 and 240 million units for the entire year, which is definitely a big number and may (or may not) prove enough to keep Apple at bay. What's pretty much certain is that will represent a decrease from Samsung's 2022 tally of around 260 million units.
Perhaps more importantly (and more worryingly for the Korea-based tech giant), even the high end of that newest prediction would fall short of the company's original 270 million unit target for 2023. Worse yet, Samsung could be looking at its lowest annual mobile phone sales result ever here, which says something about the current state of an industry that was badly hurt by a deadly pandemic just three years ago.
Even in 2020, the world's top smartphone vendor wrapped up the year with over 250 million units sold to end users, which is extremely unlikely to happen in 2023. That's due to the moderate apparent long-term success of the aforementioned S23 family, the mediocre prospects of the fast-approaching Galaxy Z Fold 5 and Z Flip 5, and most importantly, the abrupt fall in popularity of Galaxy A-series mid-rangers.
One bright spot on an otherwise bleak business outlook is Samsung's improved Q1 2023 mobile profit score, although it's unclear if that trend will be maintained through the end of the year.
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