STOCKHOLM (Reuters) – Shipments of personal computers and mobile phones are expected to fall for the second year in a row in 2023, with phone shipments falling to their lowest level in a decade, IT research firm Gartner said on Tuesday.
Mobile phone shipments will decline 4 percent to 1.34 billion units in 2023, down from 1.40 billion units in 2022, Gartner said. Their total number in 2021 was 1.43 billion.
This was close to 2009 shipment levels when BlackBerry and Nokia phones were the market leaders as Apple tried to reduce its dominance. The mobile phone market peaked in 2015 when shipments reached 1.9 billion units.
Ranjit Atwal, research director at Gartner, said in an interview that the pandemic led to a fundamental shift where people working from home no longer felt the need to switch phones as often.
“Consumers are holding on to their phones longer than expected, six to nine months, and moving away from fixed contracts in the absence of meaningful new technology,” he said.
Demand for smartphones and PCs initially rose during the pandemic, but started to decline in the middle of last year.
Rising global interest rates and the cost of living have dampened demand for smartphones, hurting companies from Samsung ( 005930.KS ) to Apple ( AAPL.O ).
The research firm said personal computer shipments are expected to fall 6.8 percent this year after falling 16 percent in 2022. Lenovo ( 0992.HK ), HP Inc ( HPQ.N ) and Dell ( DELL.N ) are the top three PC makers.
Gartner said the appliance market will slow down in 2023 on expectations of a less pessimistic economic outlook for the rest of the year and an eventual pick-up in consumer and business spending.