Global smartphone shipments to decline

Sunny Optical Technology (2382) expects global smartphone shipments in 2022 will decline by 7.9 percent to 1.22 billion compared to 2021 amid the pandemic, the war in Ukraine, global inflation and weak consumption.

The new figure is a 10.9 percent decrease compared to the original forecast at the beginning of the year,

Among the smartphone shipment regions, China's shipments are estimated to fall 16.9 percent year-on-year to 260 million units while Europe's smartphone shipments are also expected for fall by 15 percent to 170 million units, due to the Russian-Ukrainian war.

Both shipment forecasts were lowered by nearly 20 percent from the forecast at the beginning of the year.

Meanwhile, the average number of lenses per phone will continue to decrease due to high production costs brought by intense market competition.

Sunny Optical aims to continuously improve its profitability, including improving its overseas business, enhancing product cost competitiveness, promoting digitization at its factories and developing an extended reality product line.

In terms of the car market, the Sunny Optical said the global car lens market increased by 10.2 percent in 2021 compared with the previous year. The shortage of chips is a major factor hindering the recovery of the global car market. The rise of new energy vehicles and the continuous autonomous driving technologies development has driven the development of autonomous driving systems, which increase the number and specifications of lenses per car.