The world economy is suffering, and many less encouraging signs are starting to arrive regarding the giants of the smartphone market. A pillar like Samsung is preparing, according to the indiscretions collected by The Electo adjust the sales forecasts for 2022 downwards. Not just a little and even at a level that usually indicates a non-superficial malaise.
In fact, at the beginning of the year, according to rumors, the target that the white-collar workers of the smartphone division had set themselves ship around 300 million smartphones from factories to distributors around the world, on a production base of over 330 million devices. Between December and January, however, no one could imagine what would happen shortly thereafter: the pandemic would emerge and the only serious problem was the supply of chips and electronic components.
Not a small problem, of course, but at the beginning of 2022 companies had been dealing with the chip crisis for a while and believed they could manage it. In February, however, the earthquake generated by the Russian invasion of Ukraine which like the Covid-19 pandemic has again changed the cards on the table: world economies in turmoil, tensions, energy crisis, inflation that is almost out of control and consumers canceling deferred expenses.
So Samsung, according to rumors coming from Asia, has returned to the forecast table by reviewing the downward targets. From the forecast at the beginning of the year from 300 million smartphones to the current 260 million units shipped, over 10% less hoping that the budgets at the end of 2022 are not even more severe. The point is that 270 million smartphones had been shipped in 2021, so the new goal of the Seoul headquarters not only it cancels any hope of growth but it is a resounding yield to the downturn compared to the previous year.
IT IS NOT THE FIRST VOICE THAT TALKS ABOUT A LOW REVIEW
It would not be a setback comparable to that of the pandemic year, when Samsung closed with 250 million smartphones shipped against the 300 million units that were reached quite easily in previous years. But for a huge multinational that (like all the others) reasons with the logic of continuous growth and that already anticipated the idea of raising its head after the years of the pandemic would be a big disappointment.
The scenario of the The Elec it is hypothetical, it is clear, but it is not the first rumor that suggests a much worse than expected 2022. Last May it was the turn of the influential South Korean financial newspaper MK News talk about the immediate future of Samsung by sketching a situation that is not rosy, different from that of The Elec only in numbers: MKN assumed 280 million units shipped, that is 10 million above last year’s level, now we are 10 million lower than in 2021.
Numbers aside, when different voices all aim in the same direction something real, concrete, there must be. And in this case it is not good news.
