Europe smartphone shipments dropped 23% YoY in Q1 2023

The challenging economic climate continued to weigh heavily on the European smartphone market, with shipments declining by 23% year-on-year in Q1 2023, according to the latest research from Counterpoint Research’s Market Monitor service. Inflation, interest rates and energy prices remained stubbornly high, as did the conflict between Russia and Ukraine, prolonging the cautious approach consumers are taking with their discretionary spending. This protracted shrinking of the European market resulted in Q1 2023 being the region’s worst quarter for smartphone shipments since Q2 2012.

Europe smartphone shipments and YoY growth

Europe smartphone shipment market share

Counterpoint Research’s Associate Director, Jan Stryjak said, “the cost-of-living crisis continued to pour misery onto European consumers, resulting in a tough start to 2023. There were, however, some pieces of good news: Samsung, despite losing share compared to Q1 2022, successfully launched its latest flagship Galaxy 23 series (outperforming both the S22 and S21), while Apple gained share YoY (although this was more to do with it declining less than some other vendors). The biggest winner, though, was Xiaomi, being the only major vendor to register shipment growth as it recovered from a very poor Q1 2022.”

Commenting on the outlook for 2023, Stryjak added “we predicted the difficult conditions would get worse before they got better, and this was borne-out by the worst quarter for smartphone shipments we’ve seen in Europe in over a decade. However, we remain optimistic that the economic pressures should start easing in the next few quarters, boosting consumer confidence and leading to a better end of the year.”

CT Bureau