What… a… gap!
Xiaomi suffered a similarly heartbreaking decline but still finished 2022 in fourth place among the world’s top premium smartphone vendors, followed by Honor and Google, both of which managed to more than double their figures from the previous year.
What’s on the horizon?
That may have affected the segment as a whole, which only grew by 1 percent last year compared to 2021 in sales volume. Overall, premium smartphones accounted for “more than” one fifth of global shipments in 2022, which makes the segment’s 55 percent contribution to the world’s total mobile hardware-derived revenue that much more remarkable.
Clearly, this is where the real money is, and it has to be disappointing for Google and all of its hardware-building partners to see Android account for a modest 25 percent of premium device sales figures right now. No wonder the search giant is ramping up its in-house high-end smartphone production efforts, although the Pixel portfolio is still a long way from providing stiff competition for Apple’s premium iPhones in terms of mainstream popularity.
