(Central News Agency, Taipei, 19th) China is the largest base for mobile phone manufacturing and export, but mobile phone exports have continued to decline in recent years. Compared with the peak of 1.343 billion units in 2015, it will drop to 822 million units in 2022, a decrease of 5.21% in 7 years. 100 million units, Chinese media bluntly stated that “mobile phone exports may never reach their peak again.”
China Business News today quoted data from China’s General Administration of Customs showing that China exported 81.11 million mobile phones in October this year, an increase of about 10% year-on-year; however, the total exports in the first 10 months still declined, totaling 642 million units, a year-on-year decrease of 6.4%.
According to statistics, China’s mobile phone exports reached a peak in 2015, with an annual increase of 2.4% to 1.343 billion units, and then declined year after year, falling to 822 million units in 2022, a decrease of 521 million units from 2015.
China is the largest base for mobile phone manufacturing and export. As for the continued decline in mobile phone exports in recent years, reports indicate that one of the important reasons is the downturn in global mobile phone consumption.
According to data from market research organization Counterpoint, global smartphone shipments increased by 2% annually to 1.55 billion units in 2017, but declined for the first time in 2018, and shipments have dropped to 1.2 billion units in 2022.
Gao Shiwang, director and spokesman of the China Chamber of Commerce for Import and Export of Machinery and Electronic Products, said that consumers are taking longer to replace their phones, causing demand for smartphones to peak globally.
In addition to the downturn in global mobile phone consumption, Gao Shiwang said that South Korea’s Samsung gradually withdrew from the Chinese market after 2014, closed its factories in China, and turned to Vietnam and other places, which also had a greater impact on China’s mobile phone exports after 2015. . Samsung currently has basically no production capacity in China, and American Apple mobile phones have gradually moved their production lines to China in recent years.
At the same time, since 2015, Chinese local mobile phone manufacturers have also begun to actively expand overseas production bases. Xiaomi opened its first factory in India in 2015; in the same year, vivo rented a factory in India to achieve localized production; in 2016, OPPO also It invested approximately RMB 1.5 billion (approximately NT$6.6 billion) to build a factory in India.
In 2015, Indonesia proposed localized production requirements and gradually banned the import of complete machines from overseas for some models. That year, OPPO acquired an electronics factory in Indonesia, which was OPPO’s first overseas factory.
The report pointed out that Indonesia and India have become the two major overseas production sites for Chinese local mobile phone brands. Vivo’s factories in India, Turkey, Pakistan, and Bangladesh have a total annual production capacity of approximately 72 million units, of which the Indian factory has an annual production capacity of 60 million units.
Including China’s local mobile phone brands, major mobile phone manufacturers have gradually moved their production lines out of mainland China in the past few years. In addition to labor cost considerations, another main reason is that some countries, including India, impose restrictions on the import of complete mobile phone equipment. restrictions, such as increasing import tax rates, etc.
According to reports, although it has not been smooth sailing for Chinese mobile phone companies to set up overseas factories. For example, vivo was raided by the Indian Law Enforcement Bureau last year. In the same year, Xiaomi was also accused of illegal remittances by Indian law enforcement agencies, and assets worth approximately RMB 4.8 billion in India were seized. However, the companies are still It is believed that in the long run, it is inevitable for mobile phone production lines to “go global”. (Editor: Zhou Huiying/Zhang Shuling) 1121119
