Canalys Scales Back 2019 Smartphone Shipment Forecast on Trade Uncertainties

90-day reprieve, and will have a “significant impact on the company’s ability to roll out new devices short term, especially outside of China.” Canalys said Huawei is acting to mitigate the effect of component and service supply issues but expects overseas potential to be “hampered for some time.” Market uncertainty is "prompting vendors to accelerate certain strategies to minimize the short- and long-term impact in a challenging business environment, for example, shifting manufacturing to different countries to hedge against the risk of tariffs,” said analyst Nicole Peng: “With recent US announcements on tariffs on goods from more countries, the industry will be dealing with turmoil for some time.” Canalys sees other major smartphone vendors, led by Samsung, having short-term opportunities “while Huawei struggles.” Samsung’s "aggressive device strategy" and ability to ramp production quickly will give it an advantage, but it may “struggle to entirely fill the shortfall,” said analyst Rushabh Doshi, saying other vendors won’t be able to react to new opportunities until late 2019. By next year, most of the major mobile supply chain will have active contingency plans to mitigate Huawei’s decline and be ready for 5G device rollout, Doshi said. Smartphone shipments globally are expected to return to “soft growth” in 2020, rising 3.4 percent to 1.39 billion.