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Smartphone shipments: Apple down 30%, Samsung down 8%, Huawei up 50%
- echevil 7y agoI bought a Xiaomi Mi Mix 3 for about $600 earlier this year to replace my old iPhone and I'm quite happy with it. iPhone is sticking with that notch design that I really hate, and it made me started to explore other options. Mi Mix 3 and Honor Magic 2 has a sleek slider design that removed the need to put front facing camera directly on the screen. It's nice to have more options
- pdimitar 7y agoTo achieve the same as you, I replaced my iPhone X to 8 Plus and could not be happier. I grew to hate the notch and the rounded display corners. Give me a rectangular screen and I'm content.
- nafey 7y agoCheck out Dave2d's YouTube video about the same topic. Essentially it is argued that phones are going to become a commodity like printers. But he concludes that Apple is likely to escape that fate due to their ecosystem. Regardless time for change in the phone industry.
- spamizbad 7y agoUnrelated, but I just wanted to say Dave2D is great. I'm normally not the biggest fan of Youtube product review channels; I think they're a little vapid. Dave seems objective and gives insightful, broader analysis and does a good job of putting products in context of what's available.
- vatueil 7y agoLink for reference: https://youtu.be/otHviixLykI https://youtu.be/otHviixLykI
- paavoova 7y agoFor some (a minority, undoubtedly), Apple's ecosystem is exactly what keeps them away. I don't want to be told what I can and can't do with my devices and have Apple pull the strings of vendor lock-in under the guise of security.
- nkkollaw 7y agoApple has been raising prices even with diminishing demand. In Europe iPhones are more than €1000, and besides a few people most don't see any value in newer models anymore and just stick to their current model for as long as possible. When they buy a new one, most people choose a budget model because nowadays they work just as well (I guess Huawei's growth makes sense, then). Personally, I also find all new iPhones extremely ugly. I have a Moto G5 and not only does it work great, it doesn't have a notch and I paid 1/5 what an iPhone costs.
- cs02rm0 7y agoIt seems a strategy so obvious and obviously doomed to fail, but I have to assume Apple know what they're doing. I think they're taking the same route on other product lines, the MBP particularly stands out for me - most don't seem want recent "innovations" used to justify runaway price increases. I'm certainly watching this space with interest.
- znpy 7y agoThat's probably because smartphones are way too expensive. Huawei and Xiaomi sold a lot of phones because their phone are good enough not to make people miss iphones and stuff yet cost only a fraction. Personally, I got a brand new Xiaomi phone for 200 euros off Amazon with a 4-core cpu, 5.5 inches display, 64 gb storage and 4 gb ram. So far it served me good and has done everything I've needed. I got an iPhone 6 from work for on-call availability, and it is actually superior in many ways, but despite this in no way I'm going to drop 800-1100 euros on a phone.
- manmal 7y agoAnd Apple increased prices even further because they saw this coming (might as well be a self-fulfilling prophecy though).
- code_duck 7y agoI purchased a new iPhone 6 for under $200 cash about two years ago. You can get them a little cheaper now.
- znpy 7y agoyes but what's the point ? you get no warranty and the battery is already mostly consumed. my work's iphone 6 battery has already started underperforming after a few months, I guess it's not going to see the end of 2019.
- scarface74 7y agoI wouldn’t buy a 6, but you can buy A refurbished iPhone 6s from Amazon for $169 with a 90 day warranty and there is a battery indicator to tell you how good the battery is in settings. The 6s is still getting updates and probably will for at least one more release if not to. A battery replacement for your 6 - which may be over four years old at this point - is $79.
- code_duck 7y agoWhy would the battery be consumed in a new phone in the box? Or why would Apple not give you a normal warranty? I don’t have any issues with battery life and I’ve had this phone about 2 years now. The Battery Health in settings shows a max capacity of 87%. I’m not concerned about a warranty on a $200 phone - at this point I could throw it out the window at a rock and get a new phone. That’s one reason I have a cheap older iPhone. I don’t worry about losing or damaging it.
- jseliger 7y agoLast summer I replaced an iPhone 6 or 6s with a 7 that cost about $500, or half the cost of the new, high-end phones. I don't perceive the new ones to offer 2x the value of a new or refurbished 7.
- jacobr 7y agoI got an iPhone X from work but wanted a personal phone as well and just bought an iPhone 7 because it felt ridiculous carrying around two brand new really expensive phones. My previous phone was a Samsung Galaxy S9 but I decided to ask for an iPhone when I changed jobs, to avoid Google. I actually prefer the iPhone 7 to the X and even S9, I see very little reason to get anything newer.
- lostmsu 7y agoI've got a Xiaomi phone for $220. Large bright IPS screen, gestures, 4-5 days on battery with all comms on (Nexus 6 did 1 day). Only 2 drawbacks: not AMOLED (would add $100-$150, did not consider it worth), mediocre camera, which I rarely use anyway.
- kyriakos 7y ago5 times cheaper than top end Samsung or apple offerings means they had to cut some corners. On the other hand if you buy xiaomi top end you get almost the same quality as the other brands and it's still half price.
- NicoJuicy 7y agoI've never been a fan of Apple because of price. I liked the Google Nexus a lot, until the prices rose also. Now on a S9 from work. Fyi: I still prefer the bare Android experience and not the Samsung shell though
- OldFatCactus 7y agoI like to buy last year's Nexus at a steep discount
- scarface74 7y agoSo you’ve never been a fan of the iPhone for the price but the Samsung Galaxy S9 costs the same as an iPhone 8 ($600)....
- NicoJuicy 7y agoFrom work, all information was supplied. I didn't pick the phone
- noja 7y agoGive me a smartphone I can install with what I want.
- realusername 7y agoInstalling what you want is generally pretty easy, it's uninstalling what you want the main issue. Phones are coming loaded with bloatware you can't uninstall.
- noja 7y agoI want my phone like a PC: I can choose the OS with no weird outdated binary blob requirements.
- abawany 7y agoSome of the Android One phones still support bootloader unlocking. I was recently searching desperately for a recent-ish phone to replace my subtly-dead Note 3 and found that the Moto X4 Android One version supports bootloader unlocking (voiding its warranty unfortunately) and is supported by current releases of LineageOS (16).
- realusername 7y agoIt's pretty impossible to achieve even with a custom ROM unfortunately, even on LineageOS, you have a proprietary-files.txt for each model listing all the blobs you need to make your phone work.
- alttab 7y agoI'm am American and recently moved to Europe. I had to get a new phone because my old contract wasn't up. I had a LG G6 before, and ended up with a Huawei P20 and can't imagine why someone would pay 3-4x for a Samsung or an iPhone. The camera is phenomenal!
- TylerE 7y ago> can't imagine why someone would pay 3-4x for a Samsung or an iPhone. Because an iPhone doesn't run Android. Android sucks. You couldn't pay me to own an Android phone.
- sbzodnsbd 7y agoAgreed. I don’t want to buy an iPhone. But I really don’t want to buy Google. Now I’m looking for a dumb phone.
- gimli9000 7y agoProducts are generally cheaper when produced using stolen IP.
- tanilama 7y agoApple has only 2 cameras btw. P20 has 4.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- nailer 7y agoI'm not sure how this addresses the parent post's point
- tanilama 7y agoImplying for the most popular feature of the smartphone, there isn't anything for Huawei to copy from Apple. It has been very long time that iPhone doesn't have the best cameras along all, what is the point of copying that?
- mnm1 7y agoSmartphone innovation stopped a few years ago and the general public is finally catching on. At the same time, there is little difference between cheap models and expensive ones. Taking both of these into account, Apple still increased their prices significantly counting on their brand as a fashion statement more than anything. It should be no surprise that sales are significantly down overall and especially for Apple. I expect this trend to continue and likely accelerate in the future.
- scarface74 7y agoI bought my son a cheap Moto G because they were always touted as being a good value. He was more than happy when I upgraded and he got my 6s that was two years older. There is a stark performance difference between a mid range current Android phone and iPhones that are two or three years older.
- samfisher83 7y agoHuanwei is pretty expensive too.
- thetechlead 7y agoI start to believe what US has done to Huawei actually made the brand more famous. Smart phones are becoming commodities so marketing plays a big rule for sales. The tension between US government and Huawei certainly saved them tons of marketing money. Three years ago even many Chinese don't know Huawei, but look at what Huawei accomplished today. I travelled abroad frequently and people are talking Huawei everywhere even a street vendor I randomly met in nowhere Philippines, and they want to know more about my Huawei Porsche Design and discuss why Americans feels threatened by a company making electronic gadgets. No marketing money buys you that kind of popularity. In most places I traveled to, people don't believe the American version of the story, and when a superpower utilizes all its resources to try to destroy a company but couldn't do? There must be something the company did right.
- nroets 7y agoHuawei is using the standard mobile phone playbook: They have a lot of carriers pushing their phones. They spend a lot on TV marketing. They opened flagship stores in big malls. They got celebrities such as Scarlett Johansson to promote their phones.
- thetechlead 7y agoNot saying they don't spend big money in advertising. They certainly do, like any other premium brand. However their marketing campaigns alone are nothing extraordinary either. US governments accusation certainly helped - good advertising makes people intrigued, just look at the nationalist comments under Huawei related HN posts and try to read from a non-US POV. Not hard to come to a state that you wonder what the hack is truely going on and what really makes American feel so insecure. There must be something superior in the accused that triggered the action. This is happening as a trend, not just in Huaweis case, but in many topics related to China.
- rasz 7y ago>However their marketing campaigns alone are nothing extraordinary either. During last holidays almost every single commercial break in Polish TV had Huawei ad.
- noirknight 7y agoFriday I had to waste precious pub time listening to my excited co-worker wax poetic about the camera on his new Huawei phone and it’s night vision capabilities. So this article was timely for me.
- cm2012 7y agoIsn't it likely every Huawei is backdoored by the Chinese government?
- Gene_Parmesan 7y agoIsn't it likely every phone sold in the US is backdoored by the US government? I'm honestly not sure what to do about phones these days. It's getting to the point where I don't want one, but I essentially need one for work.
- merpnderp 7y agoIsn’t that demonstrably untrue given terrorist attacks and shootings that go undetected even though evidence was later found on their phones?
- acct1771 7y agoJust because you're capturing a bunch of data doesn't mean you're parsing it/piping it correctly. Just ask William Binney, et al, re: 911.
- nailer 7y agoI think the US government probably does do this - I know Intel chips have IME, and it runs Minix, that Intel (and whoever Intel reports to) has access to it, and it has it's own IP stack. But I have no idea about phones - what about ARM? Is there an equivalent?
- sbzodnsbd 7y agoSo? Better a far away government w/ little ability to harm me reading my txt than my local government.
- craigsmansion 7y agoNot likely anymore. "Evil China" is getting way more leverage by being able to shrug and say: "sure, show us the evidence, oh, btw, `Snowden'" whenever the US try to play the trustworthiness card.
- mwfunk 7y agoIt's bizarre and misleading that the author didn't take the shifts in the Chinese market in the last year or two into account. The article starts out with a statement about smartphone sales being down in America across the board, but then slips into analyzing worldwide sales numbers per vendor, leading to the conclusion from the headline. My understanding is that the majority of those shifts are from changing patterns of sales within China itself. Looking at changes in worldwide shipments without singling out how the market is changing amongst Chinese consumers is really weird given that people who follow this stuff closely have been talking about exactly that for a long time now. If you treat the numbers within China separately from the numbers outside of China (which makes sense because completely different forces are driving those numbers inside and outside of China), then in the non-Chinese market, we would see similar patterns (Apple and Samsung down, Huawei up) but on a much smaller scale, and for different reasons. The author should've picked up on the influence of the Chinese market and focused on why it's been changing so dramatically of late. That would've been a far more insightful and interesting article. This is just a bunch of numbers graphed for maximum drama without context.
- votepaunchy 7y agoApple shipments were down, but the IDC numbers reported here by Forbes are way off as noted by Xiaomi and other analysts: https://iphone.appleinsider.com/articles/19/05/03/ihs-markit-apple-shipped-438m-iphones-in-q1-down-16-from-2018 https://iphone.appleinsider.com/articles/19/05/03/ihs-markit...
- jjtheblunt 7y agoI genuinely wonder how it is that Forbes is so consistently an anti-Apple propaganda rag. It's not subtle, is shockinly consistent, and I wonder how they can think their implausible bias serves their purpose as a "news" outlet.
- Theodores 7y agoSoon one of these brands will need to diversify the range in order to keep people buying these things. The market for people wanting a big battery is not mainstream huge but is a tasty long tail. The re-invented flip phone is going to be a win with the 50% of the population that have smaller pockets in their trousers than what the other 50% have. Then there is the outdoor sports market, the phones that are waterproof and super tough. If there is a diverse range of the same product in all of these form factors then people will buy them as their life changes. One flagship can't be the perfect hand rectangle for everyone. There is going to have to be a more meaningful range, as happens with cars, laptops or even bicycles. Although times are not as growth crazy as they once were there is no need for the market to become identical hand rectangles, there is still plenty of room for product innovation even if there are no killer features on the way.
- mattkevan 7y agoForbes’ tech coverage is shameless clickbait, especially when it comes to Apple. The amount of articles they pump out along the lines of “Apple’s new phone/os release/computer/service/whatever has a nasty secret.” is ridiculous.
- tanilama 7y agoIs it that hard to admit that Apple products can no longer command a premium among its competitors? The company is now in a great trouble into irrelevancy because of years' inaction.
- colejohnson66 7y agoPeople have been spouting “Apple is going to fail” since their inception. People said the original iPhone was a fail for many reasons such as “no one wants a touchscreen” and more.[0] Until Apple fails, they’re not failing. They definitely changed directions under Tim Cook, but that’s because he’s not Steve Jobs. The Apple Watch has been a huge success with over 40% market share.[1] [0]: https://mashable.com/2017/06/29/iphone-2g-original-naysayers/ https://mashable.com/2017/06/29/iphone-2g-original-naysayers... [1]: https://www.macrumors.com/2019/05/02/apple-watch-1q19-market-share-counterpoint/ https://www.macrumors.com/2019/05/02/apple-watch-1q19-market...
- tanilama 7y agoHistory doesn't always have predictive power over future, as no one would predict Apple would have an epic comeback under Jobs. And Apple Watch is no replacement for iPhone, which has been Apple's lifeline over the past 5 years. Apple is in trouble because it doesn't have next iPhone, or iPhone4 to excite consumers. Adding incremental upgrade to iPhone while hiking up the price, is now a failed strategy and the market is punishing Apple for it. Only this time, they have nothing to offer. Pivoting to service, where they aren't particularly competitive anyway, is like a pre-claimed surrender that they don't have the confidence to make their hardware business as profitable as it was. I didn't see why people would be optimistic about Apple right now, except for the huge cash reserve they had because of iPhones. If they don't think out of box, they will be forgotten pretty soon, just like Nokia.
- scarface74 7y agoPivoting to service, where they aren't particularly competitive anyway, is like a pre-claimed surrender that they don't have the confidence to make their hardware business as profitable as it was Would you have said the same about Netflix moving from shipping DVDs to streaming or Amazon moving into the cloud vendor from retai? There is no next big thing on the horizon that is going to have a market where almost 70% penetration like the mobile phone except maybe social media. But if you look at Apple’s latest earnings, services is already growing like crazy.
- jhayward 7y agoI suspect Apple will be happy to keep taking 80%-90% of the profit in the marketplace while only shipping 20% of units.
- ableal 7y agoI wondered about the asterisks on the 'vivo' and 'OPPO' brands, and looked up the second name - turns out both (and OnePlus) are owned by the same company: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BBK_Electronics https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BBK_Electronics So, going by the shown IDC numbers, that company has shipped over 46 million phones in 1Q19, getting about 15% market share and third place behind Samsung and Huawei.
- colejohnson66 7y agoEveryone keeps mentioning that iPhones get more expensive, but when you look at it (inflation adjusted), that’s not really true.[0] Apple is still charging about $700 (inflation adjusted) for a phone just as they did when it was first released. The only outliers are the SE, X, and Xs. The only reason phones seemed cheaper is because AT&T would subsidize your brand new iPhone 3G so you only paid a few hundred, not the full price. [0]: http://static.digg.com/images/a24b0086e42c464fabd1652cf01f8a41_a868a93a0a1b42d59ca22ac8c70db67f_1_post.png http://static.digg.com/images/a24b0086e42c464fabd1652cf01f8a...
- dragonwriter 7y ago> Everyone keeps mentioning that iPhones get more expensive, but when you look at it (inflation adjusted), that’s not really true.[ But your own source shows it's really true, and that the current cheaper, sub-flagship iPhone model (XR) is more expensive than the flagship models of previous generations up through the 5 and 5S, even adjusted for inflation, and that the only non-increases for the top-of-line flagship from one year to the next have been a few of the S models where the price dropped very slightly from the prior-year non-S equivalent.
- colejohnson66 7y agoTrue. But my point was that their phones don’t go up in price like people think. Yes, if you compare $499 for a bottom tier 4GB iPhone 2G to $1449 for a top of the line 512GB iPhone XS Max, they’re more expensive. But the cost for the base model has hovered around the $700 mark when adjusted (save for the few outliers such as the 2G, SE, X, and XS)
- dragonwriter 7y ago> But the cost for the base model If you mean the model with the number but no other modifier except sometimes “S”, that's true up through the iPhone 8, but that “base model” isn't the same place in the lineup in different generations. That model is the only (and thus flagship) model prior through the 5, but the bottom of the line for the 6 through 8 (well, middle of the road for the 7 generation, since that's when the SE came out as a bargain basement offering.) And for the X (same year as 8) and XS, it's just not even approximately true anymore.
- craftoman 7y agoEx Samsung Galaxy S8 owner here. Dropped it 4-5 times and the screen went off. I bought a Xiaomi Mi5, dropped it like 100 times and it still working without a problem except for the battery. It started to drain quickly after the 2th year of use which is normal and after all it costs 10 dollars for a brand new.