IDC Lifts 2024 Smartphone Forecast, But It's Conservative
Their outlook doesn't factor in the looming AI-on-device upgrade cycle.
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* IDC updated 2024 smartphone shipment forecast is out, but it looks conservative to us
Early in the current quarter, we dished on IDC’s findings that global smartphone shipments rose 7.8% year over year to 289.4 million units, signaling the issues that plagued that market in 2023 were largely over.
IDC’s figures showed Apple AAPL and Samsung SSNLF lost market share during the quarter, but as we saw in Apple’s March quarter results. Its iPhone business was better than expected as consumers embraced its Pro model line.
Today, IDC shared its latest smartphone forecast for 2024, calling for global shipment growth to increase 4% this year to 1.21 billion units and another 2.3% in 2025.
While that sounds positive, when we annualize the Q1 2024 figure, it suggests only modest unit growth to hit IDC’s target. Our suspicion is IDC’s 1.21 billion units could prove to be conservative due to the looming AI-on-device upgrade cycle and greater adoption of foldable products.
Another reason why IDC’s forecast could be surpassed is accelerating adoption of 5G smartphones across the globe. To be fair to IDC, today’s updated forecast compared to its March market forecast of 1.20 billion units this year.
In its estimation, IDC sees the Android smartphone ecosystem rising 4.8% this year compared to just under 1% for Apple. With the recent rebound in China shipments and the expected focus on AI at Apple’s WWDC event on June 10, we wouldn’t be surprised to see IDC revise its 2024 forecast even higher when it reports on Q2 2024 smartphone shipments.
Confidence in that comes from the growing number of comments about AI-enabled smartphones, including the one from Best Buy’s BBY earnings call today, which we discussed in today’s video.
At the time of publication, TheStreet Pro Portfolio was long AAPL.
