Global Smartphone ODM Market

Smartphone ODM/IDH Companies’ 2021 Shipments Rise 6.4% YoY

This report tracks trends in global smartphone ODM/OEM relationships globally, key activities in the segment, drivers and future developments of the ODM sector, as well as observations on regional developments with regards to smart devices manufacturing in general.

36% smartphones were designed externally (including IDHs + ODMs), down 8.3% YoY. This is mainly due to a high comparison base of H2 2020, which was boosted by high pent-up demand.
Losses were mainly driven by Samsung and OPPO Group, which moved more designing work internally, as well as LG, which scaled down its smartphone operations. On the other hand, HONOR, Transsion Group, Xiaomi and Lenovo/Motorola increased orders to ODMs to keep up with market demand.

Huaqin, Wingtech and Longcheer continued to dominate the global smartphone ODM/IDH market. The ‘Big 3’ accounted for 69% of the global ODM/IDH smartphone shipments in H2 2021, down from 77% a year ago. This was due to the losses from key clients Samsung, OPPO Group and LG.

Outsourced manufacturing has been a significant feature of the wider consumer electronics industry as well as the handset market for many years. The logic being that little value is added by having the production process conducted exclusively in-house. Today, few handset manufacturers conduct all their own manufacturing and many, like Apple, do none at all.