The growth momentum in global smartphone market will remain weak in 2018 due to lower demand and less replacement purchases, says TrendForce. Faced with continuous rise in the costs of upstream components, downstream mobile phone vendors have to re-consider the pricing or adjust the specification of end-products to cope with the cost pressures. The distribution of market share among the major players is expected to remain generally the same as last year. Therefore, TrendForce estimates the global smartphone production for 2018 at around 1.5 billion units, a 2.8% annual growth only, down from previously expected 5%.
According to DRAMeXchange, a division of TrendForce, the DRAM revenue for 4Q17 grew by 14.2% QoQ to a new high, and the DRAM revenue for the entire 2017 grew by 76% YoY.
Market research firm TrendForce reports that the global notebook shipments for 2017 registered 164.7 million units, a year-on-year increase of 2.1%, higher than previous expectation of 0.7%.
LEDinside, a division of TrendForce, reports that some high and mid-power LED package products in China's market witnessed slight price drop in January 2018 as suppliers were trying to clear inventory at the year end.
Apple’s upcoming launch of HomePod has intensified the competition in smart speaker market. According to TrendForce, Amazon Echo still tops the ranking of smart speaker products in 2018 with a market share in shipment of 50.8%, although down from 69.1% in 2017. The share of Google Home is projected at 21.6%, ranking the 2nd. The new Apple HomePod is expected to reach a share of 8.9%, while the numbers for Alibaba’s and Xiaomi's smart speakers will be 6.3% and 5.1% respectively.