South Korean Smartphone Production Falls Sharply Due To Samsung, LG Relocations

The number of smartphones being produced in South Korea has significantly decreased over the years. This year, production is expected to reach 25 million, which is quite low compared to a decade ago.

Yonhap learned from industry tracker Strategy Analytics on Tuesday that the number of handsets produced in Samsung Electronics and LG Electronics’ home country has fallen sharply compared ten years earlier.

In 2008, the tracker recorded 136 million units of smartphones, accounting for 11.4 percent of the world’s production at the time. Comparing the predicted figure for 2018 to data from 2008, South Korea’s smartphone production now accounts for 1.3 percent of the world’s production.

The major reason why smartphone production in South Korea plummeted has to do with the relocations Samsung and LG made recently. The two companies have apparently moved their factories abroad, thereby increasing the production of handsets by other countries.

India and Vietnam were revealed to be the countries that benefited from the relocations. Samsung gets half of its handset supply from Vietnam and it also recently opened a new production plant in India. Meanwhile, LG produces 15 percent of its total smartphone supply in its home country and manufactures the rest in Vietnam and Brazil.

China — home to emerging brands like Huawei, Oppo, Vivo and Xiaomi — is now predicted to take up 70 percent of the total smartphone production in the world by making 1.3 billion units of handsets this year.

India is going to trail behind China when it manufactures 264 million units of phones. The figure accounts for 13.6 percent of the world’s production. As for Vietnam, it is going to take up 9.7 percent when it produces 188 million units. This is an amazing feat for the country that initially produced very few units back in 2013.