{"id":631613,"date":"2026-10-15T18:10:19","date_gmt":"2026-10-15T18:10:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/631613\/"},"modified":"2026-10-15T18:10:19","modified_gmt":"2026-10-15T18:10:19","slug":"smartphone-sales-drop-as-chip-costs-soar","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/631613\/","title":{"rendered":"Smartphone sales drop as chip costs soar"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Global smartphone shipments during the third quarter fell to their lowest level in 14 years, as a memory chip supply crunch pressured manufacturers to raise prices. As a result, consumers are keeping their devices for longer, and <a href=\"https:\/\/www.reuters.com\/business\/retail-consumer\/global-smartphone-shipments-record-worst-third-quarter-14-years-amid-memory-2026-10-12\/\" class=\"_linkEmbed_1pt7l_31\" rel=\"noopener nofollow\" target=\"_blank\">many have turned to refurbishments<\/a>, an analyst at research firm Counterpoint said. <\/p>\n<p>Soft demand has hit Apple, the world\u2019s second-biggest supplier after Samsung, <a href=\"https:\/\/asia.nikkei.com\/business\/technology\/exclusive-apple-cuts-iphone-18-pro-orders-due-to-soft-demand\" class=\"_linkEmbed_1pt7l_31\" rel=\"noopener nofollow\" target=\"_blank\">particularly hard<\/a> \u2014 October data showed the US tech giant, which relies on phone sales for around 50% of its revenue, reduced orders for the iPhone 18 by 15-20%. But it\u2019s not just Apple in trouble: Transsion, a Chinese maker of low-cost phones sold mostly in Africa, is also under pressure, with its shares <a href=\"https:\/\/asia.nikkei.com\/business\/markets\/equities\/chinese-king-of-african-phone-market-transsion-sinks-in-hong-kong-listing\" class=\"_linkEmbed_1pt7l_31\" rel=\"noopener nofollow\" target=\"_blank\">falling 7% in their Hong Kong debut<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Global smartphone shipments during the third quarter fell to their lowest level in 14 years, as a memory&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":631614,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[16],"tags":[342,111,139,69,145],"class_list":["post-631613","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-mobile","tag-mobile","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-technology"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/631613","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=631613"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/631613\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/631614"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=631613"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=631613"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=631613"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}