Market investigation by TrendForce reveals that in the second quarter of 2021, the US and Europe are the main markets for Apple’s upcoming iPhone 12 series. The spike in the smartphone’s demand is accredited to the economy’s recovery phase after COVID-19 vaccination drives in the aforementioned regions.
Another positive impact of the COVID-19 recovery phase is that year, the new iPhone series will launch in September, the usual timeframe. iPhone 12 series was introduced in October, after a month’s delay, due to supply chain constraints created by lockdowns and social distancing precautionary measures.
Recovery of US and Europe from COVID-19 and the exit of competitor from markets boost iPhone 12 sales
TrendForce writes that Apple has two factors working in its favor before the launch of the new smartphone series: recovering economies and Huawei’s abandonment of market share.
This year, the US and Europe, which are Apple’s main markets for iPhone devices, are seeing an easing of the pandemic and expecting an economic recovery. Furthermore, Apple is expected to benefit from Huawei’s abandonment of some market share for high-end smartphones, and the sales of the new iPhone devices in 2H21 will likely be boosted thanks to this development. On the whole, the outlook on Apple’s performance in the smartphone market for the whole year is positive, according to TrendForce’s latest investigations.
iPhone 12 and iPhone 12 Pro were the best-selling 5G smartphones in October 2020. But Huawei’s 5G models were on 4th, 5th, and 7th spots on the global top 10 5G smartphones sales.
In addition, the report also states that in anticipation of the high demand, Apple will increase the annual production of the smartphone in 2021 to 223 million units.
Although the ongoing capacity crunch in the foundry industry will have a constraining effect on Apple in terms of ramping up its iPhone production and growing its market share in the future, TrendForce is still maintaining a cautiously optimistic view and forecasts that the annual total iPhone smartphone production for 2021 will grow by around 12.3% YoY to 223 million units, with additional room for a slight growth going forward.
Later this year, the iPhone 13 series is speculated to launch which will have four models, a larger battery, smaller notch, improved camera system, LiDAR scanner across the series, and much more.
