Declining Shipment of Smartphones
The Ministry of Science, ICT & Future Planning announced on September 12 that South Korea’s exports from the information and communications technology (ICT) sector totaled US$14.13 billion last month. It added that the monthly total imports and trade surplus added up to US$7.53 billion and US$6.59 billion, respectively.
By item, semiconductor exports increased 2.5% from a year ago to US$5.59 billion and the exports of computers and peripherals jumped 22.7% to US$630 million. Meanwhile, mobile phone exports including semi-finished goods dropped by 18.1% to US$1.98 billion. South Korea’s mobile phone exports decreased by 7.9% year on year in April this year and the rate of decrease reached 16.7%, 8.3%, 10.1% and 18.1% in the following months. With semi-finished goods excluded from the calculation, the amount of exports has declined all the way since May, showing a negative year-on-year growth of no less than 39.8% in July.
“The decline in mobile phone exports can be attributed to fierce competition with Chinese manufacturers above anything else,” the ministry explained, adding, “The exports to the United States and China respectively dropped by 25.1% and 19.9% from a year earlier for the same reason.”
It went on to say that more and more mobile phone components are being procured abroad these days and this has resulted in a decline of 19.6% and 32.7% in mobile phone component exports to China and India last month.