Digitimes Research has lowered its global smartphone shipment forecast for 2020 to 1.15 billion units, down 15.4% from 2019's 1.36 billion because of the impacts from the coronavirus pandemic.
Weak end-market demand will undermine smartphone brands' orders to ODMs in the year with overall smartphone ODM shipments in 2020 to slip 13.6% on year to arrive at only 260 million units, according to Digitimes Research's new smartphone report.
The worldwide top-3 smartphone ODMs are China-based Wingtech, Huaqin and Longcheer, and the three manufacturers are expected to continue expanding production capacities in China, Southeast Asia and India in 2020.
The three ODMs' combined share of global smartphone shipments in 2020 is expected to rise to a new record, but each of them will see shipments in the year slip over 10% on year because of the pandemic's impact on end-market demand for smartphones, Digitimes Research's figures show.
At the moment, Apple and Vivo are still developing their smartphones completely in house, and therefore, ODMs have been striving keenly for 4G and 5G smartphones orders from brands such as Samsung Electronics, Huawei, Oppos, Xiaomi and Lenovo.