Smartphone shipments in the Middle East and North Africa contracted 12.1% year-on-year (YoY) to 148 million units in 2022, the lowest shipment level since 2015 as macroeconomic factors affect consumer buying.
Counterpoint Research senior analyst Yang Wang said: “The MEA smartphone market closed the year with another tough quarter. Much of the difficulties, such as high inflation rates, energy and food prices, and depreciating domestic currencies against the US dollar, were caused by factors outside of the control of market participants.
“With the drop in consumer sentiment, OEMs were put under enormous pressure and had to take drastic measures such as destocking, cutting marketing and channel spending, and taking a very careful approach to pricing.”
The analyst company stated Q4 saw an 18.4% drop, which improved on the 20.4% decline seen in Q3.
Samsung was the largest shipping vendor with a 24% market share, a 4% increase from last year. This was due to the Galaxy A series being popular with aspirational consumers buying their first 5G devices.
Transsion Group brand Tecno was the second largest vendor with a 14% market share, with Xiaomi and Infinix taking third with 10% a piece. Fellow Transsion brand itel was fourth with 8% and Apple in fifth with 5%.
A positive note on the MEA market was the growth of 5G devices as smartphone shipments accounted for 18% of shipments in 2022, beating Counterpoint’s initial forecast of 16.5% at the beginning of the year. Counterpoint stated 27 million 5G devices were shipped last year which was a surge of 47% from 18.4 million in 2021.
