A chain of events seem to be negatively impacting the smartphone market. According to the latest predictions from DigiTimes Research, the extended Lunar New Year break in China, together with the SARS-CoV-2 outbreak, will likely result in a major decline in the first quarter of 2020, as far as the smartphone market is concerned.

Extrapolating to the entire year of 2020, the research predicts “much lower” numbers as the market is slowing down dramatically.

Digitimes Research expects mobile devices shipments to see major declines in first-quarter 2020, and the full-year shipment volumes will also be much lower than previously expected. And how bad the falls will be depends on the workers’ return rates and the supply of materials and components.

DigiTimes

Coincidentally, notebook unit shipments for the first quarter of 2020 are estimated to plunge 29-36%, compared to the previously predicted 17%.

Global smartphone shipments are expected to slip below 1.3 billion units in 2020, including less than 200 million units of 5G models, taking into account the impacts of the outbreak on China and around the world in terms of economic growth.

DigiTimes

Production has been resumed in some of the Chinese ODM manufacturing facilities, while other factories outside of China, like Samsung and LG in South Korea, are facing (hopefully) temporary setbacks due to the same bug.

Source: DigiTimes