According to the latest IDC ‘Worldwide Quarterly Mobile Phone Tracker’, the Australia smartphone market remained flat with 7.38 million units in 2022, a meagre growth of 0.1% Year-on-Year (YoY). Meanwhile, the New Zealand smartphone market grew 0.9% YoY in 2022 to reach 1.47 million units, bucking the trend for decline that has occurred annually since 2019.
Usually, the end of each year is a seasonally strong period with Black Friday and Boxing Day sales and promotions. However, Q4 2022 saw a decline of 5.8% YoY in Australia with sales of only 2.2 million units; the report noting this drop could be attributed to the tapering consumer-demand and cautious spending due to rising living cost, high inflation and growing macro-economic concerns.
In Q4 2022, New Zealand shipments declined by 21% YoY to the lowest reported Q4 smartphone shipment volume since 2010, caused by soft consumer-demand, high inflation and economic uncertainty. Adding to the challenges for vendors, consumers have begun to rethink how often they are upgrading their devices. Software upgrades are available for longer, and there are fewer step changes/innovations between the updated series and the former version thus reducing consumers’ motivation to upgrade as frequently.
2023 Australia outlook
The overall smartphone market in Australia is expected to decline by 1.3% in 2023 due to high inflation and low consumer-confidence. As rising cost-of-living puts pressure on household budgets, consumers will remain cautious in their device spends impacting the overall smartphone shipments during the year.
2023 New Zealand outlook
IDC expects the overall smartphone market in New Zealand to fall by 5.4% YoY in 2023. Smartphone performance is expected to be weakened by waning consumer-confidence and high inflation. Although shipments in the second half of year are expected to be greater than the first half, fears of a recession mid-to-late 2023 resulted in a more cautious outlook.