Apple maintained its position as the world’s largest smartphone maker by shipments in the fourth quarter of 2022, according to IDC. However, iPhone shipments declined 14.9% year-on-year.
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Global smartphone shipments plunged in the fourth quarter of 2022 — usually a big holiday shopping period — thanks to macroeconomic weakness and soft consumer demand, according to market research firm IDC.
Electronics firms shipped 300.3 million smartphones in the October to December quarter, an 18.3% year-over-year fall, IDC said in a report published late Wednesday. The drop marks the largest-ever decline in a single quarter.
A total of 1.21 billion smartphones were shipped in 2022, which represents the lowest annual shipment total since 2013 “due to significantly dampened consumer demand, inflation, and economic uncertainties,” IDC said.
“We have never seen shipments in the holiday quarter come in lower than the previous quarter. However, weakened demand and high inventory caused vendors to cut back drastically on shipments,” said Nabila Popal, research director at IDC.
Shipments represent the devices that companies like Apple and Samsung send to retailers and mobile carriers. They do not equal sales but they do give an indication of demand.
IDC said that the “tough close to the year puts the 2.8% recovery expected for 2023 in serious jeopardy with heavy downward risk to the forecast.”
Apple maintained its position as the number one smartphone maker in the world. The U.S. tech giant shipped 72.3 million iPhones in the fourth quarter, down 14.9% year on year, IDC said. Apple had a 24.1% market share. The decline came although Apple launched its latest models — the iPhone 14 series — ahead of the crucial holiday quarter.
Samsung, the second-largest smartphone player, saw shipments decline 15.6% year on year to 58.2 million units. Samsung did not release a brand new flagship smartphone for the fourth quarter but is holding an event on Feb. 1 at which it is likely to show off its new device.
Chinese electronics maker Xiaomi, which came in third, shipped 33.2 million units in the fourth quarter of the year, down 26.3% year on year. That was the biggest decline among the top five smartphone players, which also include Chinese smartphone makers Oppo and Vivo.
“With 2022 declining more than 11% for the year, 2023 is set up to be a year of caution as vendors will rethink their portfolio of devices while channels will think twice before taking on excess inventory,” said Anthony Scarsella, research director at IDC.
Dylan Field, co-founder and CEO of Figma, appears on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange on July 31, 2025.
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Figma shares dropped 23% on Monday, cutting into the gains the design software company posted after hitting the market last week.
The stock dropped $27.50 to $94.50 as of midday. That’s down from a close of $122 on Friday.
Figma and top stockholders sold about 37 million shares at $33 per share late Wednesday, yielding around $412 million in proceeds flowing to the company. On Thursday, its first day of trading on the New York Stock Exchange, the stock more than tripled.
The initial reception shows a renewed appetite on Wall Street for high-growth technology companies after a historically slow stretch for initial public offerings.
Figma said in an updated IPO prospectus that it expects second-quarter revenue to increase about 40% from a year earlier. But unlike many technology companies that have gone public over the past several years, Figma has regularly posted profits.
Figma’s fully diluted valuation sits at approximately $56 billion, almost triple the amount Adobe agreed to pay in its 2022 acquisition offer. Regulators in the European Union and the U.K. opposed the deal, which the two companies called off in late 2023.
Dylan Field, Figma’s 33-year-old CEO, owns stock in the company worth more than $5 billion even after Monday’s slide.
The logo for Wondery is displayed on a smartphone in an arranged photograph taken in the Brooklyn borough of New York, U.S., on Tuesday, Sept. 29, 2020.
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Amazon is laying off roughly 110 employees in its Wondery podcast division and the head of the group is leaving as part of a broader reshuffling of the company’s audio unit.
In a Monday note to staffers, Steve Boom, Amazon’s vice president of audio, Twitch and games, said the company is consolidating some Wondery units under its Audible audiobook and podcasting division. Wondery CEO Jen Sargent is also stepping down from her role, Boom said.
“These changes will not only better align our teams as they work to take advantage of the strategic opportunities ahead but, even more crucially, will ensure we have the right structure in place to deliver the very best experience to creators, customers and advertisers,” Boom wrote in the memo, which was viewed by CNBC. “Unfortunately, these changes also include some role reductions, and we have notified those employees this morning.”
The move comes nearly five years after Amazon acquired Wondery as part of a push to expand its catalog of original audio content. The podcasting company made a name for itself with hit shows like “Dirty John” and “Dr. Death.”
More recently, Wondery signed several lucrative licensing deals with Jason and Travis Kelce’s “New Heights” podcast, along with Dax Shepard’s “Armchair Expert.”
Amazon is streamlining “how Wondery further integrates” into the company by separating the teams that oversee its narrative podcasts from those developing “creator-led shows,” Boom wrote.
The narrative podcasting unit will consolidate under Audible, and creator-led content will move to a new unit within Boom’s organization in Amazon called “creator services,” he wrote.
Amazon’s audio pursuits face a heightened challenge from the growing popularity of video podcasts on Alphabet‘s YouTube, which now hosts an increasing number of shows.
Video shows require different discovery, growth and monetization strategies than “audio-first, narrative series,” Boom wrote in the memo to Amazon staffers.
“The podcast landscape has evolved significantly over the past few years,” Boom said.
Baidu will bring its driverless taxis to Europe next year via a partnership with U.S. ridehailing firm Lyft, as the Chinese tech giant looks to expand its autonomous vehicles globally.
The robotaxis will initially be deployed in the U.K. and Germany from 2026 with the aim to have “thousands” of vehicles across Europe in the “following years,” the two companies said.
Lyft has had very little presence in Europe until last week when it closed the acquisition of Germany-based ride hailing company FreeNow, which is available in over 150 cities across nine countries, including Ireland, the U.K., Germany and France.
Deployment of the autonomous cars is “pending regulatory approval,” Lyft and Baidu said in a Monday statement. It’s unclear if Lyft will offer Baidu’s robotaxis via the FreeNow app or another product.
The partnership marks a continued push from Baidu to expand its robotaxis to international markets.
Last month, Baidu partnered with Uber to deploy its autonomous cars on the ride-hailing giant’s platform outside the U.S. and mainland China, with a focus on the Middle East and Asia, which will launch later this year. The partnership also covers Europe, though a launch date for the region has not yet been disclosed.
In China, Baidu has been operating its own robotaxi service since 2021 in major cities like Beijing, allowing users to hail an Apollo Go car through the app. Meanwhile, for Lyft, the deal could boost the firm’s presence in the region as it looks to take on rivals like Uber and Bolt.
Autonomous vehicles have become a big focus for ride-hailing companies which have looked to partner with companies that are developing the technology for driverless cars.