Why are people buying less smartphones this year

Chip-maker Qualcomm has announced that phone sales will be down much more than expected, in low double-digit, this year owing to the unpredictable global economic environment. Announcing the fiscal fourth quarter results, Cristiano Amon, President and CEO of Qualcomm, said that "while our financial outlook is being temporarily impacted by elevated channel inventory, our diversification strategy and long-term opportunities remain unchanged".

"Given the uncertainty caused by the macroeconomic environment, we are updating our guidance for calendar year 2022 3G/4G/5G handset volumes from a year-over-year mid-single-digit percentage decline, to a low double-digit percentage decline," Qualcomm said in a statement late on Wednesday.

The rapid deterioration in demand and easing of supply constraints across the semiconductor industry have resulted in elevated channel inventory, it admitted.

In its Q4, the company delivered record revenues of $11.4 billion, reflecting record revenues in its chipset business and solid performance in licensing.

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The FY22 revenues of $44 billion were up 32 per cent year over year.

"In handsets, we entered into a new multiyear agreement with Samsung, expanding the use of Snapdragon platforms for future premium Samsung Galaxy products globally," said Amon.

"Snapdragon has become synonymous with premium mobile experiences worldwide. In automotive, our design win pipeline across connectivity, digital cockpit, and ADAS is now greater than $30 billion.

"While our financial outlook is being temporarily impacted by elevated channel inventory, our diversification strategy and long-term opportunities remain unchanged," the CEO said.

The game-changing AI capabilities of the Snapdragon compute platform, recently demonstrated at Microsoft Ignite 2022 developer conference, will redefine user experiences on Windows 11. "In edge networking IoT, we have seen positive share traction related to the rollout of Wi-Fi 6 and 6E solutions for enterprise access points and retail mesh systems," informed Amon.