5 ms·

Apple loses top phonemaker spot to Samsung

54 points by ilikecinnamon 2y ago

gumby 2y ago
Given market dynamics it was rather surprising that Apple ever reached #1 at all. Perhaps it will happen again in 9 months if there is some spike after the 2024 phones are released. Regardless of volume, Apple takes the lion's share of profits, with Samsung a distant second (and I believe nobody in third place). ISTR that Apple + Samsung constituted something like 106% of the total industry profit, making it a lot like the airlines.
- paxys 2y ago
  Based on what? "Budget" phone manufacturers (Xiaomi, Oppo, Vivo, Transsion and many others in the long tail) make tens of billions of dollars in revenue every year and are very profitable.
  - baybal2 2y ago
    [dead]
  - gumby 2y ago
    Revenue, yes, but minimal or no profit hence the churn. You can look up the data if you have a statista subscription.
    - paxys 2y ago
      I'd think the financial reports of these companies are a much more reliable source than statista. * Xiaomi made $2.4B in profit last year (https://qz.com/xiaomi-profits-earnings-apple-iphone-sales-china-1851347752 https://qz.com/xiaomi-profits-earnings-apple-iphone-sales-ch...) * Transsion $760M (https://simplywall.st/stocks/cn/tech/shse-688036/shenzhen-transsion-holdings-shares/news/shenzhen-transsion-holdings-full-year-2023-earnings-eps-cn68 https://simplywall.st/stocks/cn/tech/shse-688036/shenzhen-tr...) * ZTE $1.3B (https://www.wsj.com/business/earnings/ztes-profit-rises-as-margins-improve-39edb276 https://www.wsj.com/business/earnings/ztes-profit-rises-as-m...) Plenty of others are private and don't publish financials but also don't operate in an environment where they can burn through hundreds of millions or billions of dollars without any expectation of profit.
      - Tagbert 2y ago
        Compare that to $97B profit for Apple in 2023.
        paxys 2y ago
        Why do you need to compare anything? Read what we are discussing.
        gumby 2y ago
        I agree with that part. But like Apple, ZTE and Xiaomi have other revenue streams beyond handsets (don't know about Transson, but that seems like a pretty narrow margin). I took a whip through the Xiaomi financials and they talk about profit mix in percentages but I didn't see a break out by line. In any case the analysts are pretty clear that Apple and Samsung are most of the profit in the handset sector and the churn at the bottom is all non-viable white label businesses. Whether a few inbetween like Xiaomi can sustainably make much profit remains to be seen. I am interested to see if Apple's phone business (and I suppose smartphones in general) has seen its best days. I am going to replace my iphone in the fall, but merely due to age; I don't even know what model number apple is up to these days. The phones seem pretty much the same.
        bdd8f1df777b 2y ago
        > I took a whip through the Xiaomi financials and they talk about profit mix in percentages but I didn't see a break out by line. Xiaomi's phone is its primary business. If they were operating at a loss on their phones, they wouldn't have any other lucrative business to absorb that loss and turn positive on their profit.
- blackoil 2y ago
  > Perhaps it will happen again in 9 months If China sales continue to plummet, it may be even lower.
ChrisArchitect 2y ago
[flagged]
- altairprime 2y ago
  If you email the mods when two dupes both have discussion, they’ll merge them; the footer contact link has their address.
  - ChrisArchitect 2y ago
    Thanks. Mods are looking for the flag already. Don't need to email them. Better would be stop posting dupes. Discuss over there on the ongoing thread.
    - altairprime 2y ago
      Flags don’t attract mod attention. Flags are handled by code. Emailing the mods cleans up the front page. Comments on dupes does not.
silisili 2y ago
One thing Samsung does to reel you in is to make ridiculous offers to existing customers. I'm not sure if Apple does the same or not. For example, they'll often list a phone for say $1000. Then offer you $800 trade in on last years model, and maybe $500 on a two year old model, both objectively much more than the phone is worth. Pair that with EPP discounts that almost everyone qualifies for, RetailMeNot sitewide codes, credit card rewards, and random Samsung offers - you can often upgrade every year if you want for very little money.
- 999900000999 2y ago
  Samsung also has much better lower end. The iPhone SE starts at 430$, compared to 200$ for a Samsung A14. Often Samsung phones are even cheaper with a prepaid. For 90% of people that A14 is going to give you the same utility. However Apple probably has a much better margin here. They get to own the whole stack, if I buy an an Android phone I'm getting my apps from Google, my cloud storage from Google. If I buy an iPhone I'm buying apps from Apple, paying for iCloud and Apple TV.
  - karmakaze 2y ago
    That A14 is surprising. It has a huge screen, decent battery, dual-sim, headphone jack, and can take a 1TB MicroSD. The one I saw didn't even have much bloat installed on it.
    - 999900000999 2y ago
      I actually was using a cheap Samsung phone( with a jack ) for a good while, but it lacked Esim. I suspect at the lower end most people aren't buying 100$ earbuds so they might as well leave the jack.
      - karmakaze 2y ago
        And on the other end can have hi-res DACs not limited by crapily-negotiated codecs.
  - 2y ago
tecoholic 2y ago
Also, I walked into an electronics store the other day and could tell between an iPhone and a Samsung phone anymore. Everything looks the same. They got the “iPhone look” market covered.
97s 2y ago
I had a top tier Samsung phone the s22ultra. Within a little over a year the service basically stopped working. Samsung had tons of reports of other s22ultra with the same problem. Samsung basically said no refund no exchange. You can trade it in for 400 towards a new Samsung. This was a 1000+ dollar phone that barely made it past warranty. I will never ever use a Samsung again. It was my fault for not checking the warranty. I should have known better when a 1000+ flagship phone only has a one year warranty it can't be very good, right? I now just buy cheap phones cause that experience ruined me. Their support was so bad and they didn't care at all about the forums of people with the exact same issues. I don't know how this company is top seller. This surprises me so much.
- tymscar 2y ago
  I don’t know where you are from, but in the EU and UK, consumers get 4-6 years of hardware warranty, on all tech products. Look into the legislation. I got a MacBook replaced after 5 years.
  - foldr 2y ago
    There is certainly no such legislation in the UK.
    - tymscar 2y ago
      Im not sure why are you so certain about it. I am living in the uk and the example I gave about the MacBook happened here. The law in question is the consumer rights act of 2015, specifically section 105. Scroll down on the page and read it. I invoked it 3 times already with different companies successfully. https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2015/15/section/19/notes?view=plain https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2015/15/section/19/note...
      - foldr 2y ago
        Section 105 explains explicitly that it's not a warranty: >For example, the statutory right may not be breached and so a consumer would not be able to obtain a remedy if, say, a very cheap kettle stopped working fully after four years, as a reasonable person might not expect a bottom of the range kettle to last that long.

54 points by ilikecinnamon 2y ago

Given market dynamics it was rather surprising that Apple ever reached #1 at all. Perhaps it will happen again in 9 months if there is some spike after the 2024 phones are released. Regardless of volume, Apple takes the lion's share of profits, with Samsung a distant second (and I believe nobody in third place). ISTR that Apple + Samsung constituted something like 106% of the total industry profit, making it a lot like the airlines.

paxys 2y ago
Based on what? "Budget" phone manufacturers (Xiaomi, Oppo, Vivo, Transsion and many others in the long tail) make tens of billions of dollars in revenue every year and are very profitable.
- baybal2 2y ago
  [dead]
- gumby 2y ago
  Revenue, yes, but minimal or no profit hence the churn. You can look up the data if you have a statista subscription.
  - paxys 2y ago
    I'd think the financial reports of these companies are a much more reliable source than statista. * Xiaomi made $2.4B in profit last year (https://qz.com/xiaomi-profits-earnings-apple-iphone-sales-china-1851347752 https://qz.com/xiaomi-profits-earnings-apple-iphone-sales-ch...) * Transsion $760M (https://simplywall.st/stocks/cn/tech/shse-688036/shenzhen-transsion-holdings-shares/news/shenzhen-transsion-holdings-full-year-2023-earnings-eps-cn68 https://simplywall.st/stocks/cn/tech/shse-688036/shenzhen-tr...) * ZTE $1.3B (https://www.wsj.com/business/earnings/ztes-profit-rises-as-margins-improve-39edb276 https://www.wsj.com/business/earnings/ztes-profit-rises-as-m...) Plenty of others are private and don't publish financials but also don't operate in an environment where they can burn through hundreds of millions or billions of dollars without any expectation of profit.
    - Tagbert 2y ago
      Compare that to $97B profit for Apple in 2023.
      - paxys 2y ago
        Why do you need to compare anything? Read what we are discussing.
        gumby 2y ago
        I agree with that part. But like Apple, ZTE and Xiaomi have other revenue streams beyond handsets (don't know about Transson, but that seems like a pretty narrow margin). I took a whip through the Xiaomi financials and they talk about profit mix in percentages but I didn't see a break out by line. In any case the analysts are pretty clear that Apple and Samsung are most of the profit in the handset sector and the churn at the bottom is all non-viable white label businesses. Whether a few inbetween like Xiaomi can sustainably make much profit remains to be seen. I am interested to see if Apple's phone business (and I suppose smartphones in general) has seen its best days. I am going to replace my iphone in the fall, but merely due to age; I don't even know what model number apple is up to these days. The phones seem pretty much the same.
        bdd8f1df777b 2y ago
        > I took a whip through the Xiaomi financials and they talk about profit mix in percentages but I didn't see a break out by line. Xiaomi's phone is its primary business. If they were operating at a loss on their phones, they wouldn't have any other lucrative business to absorb that loss and turn positive on their profit.
blackoil 2y ago
> Perhaps it will happen again in 9 months If China sales continue to plummet, it may be even lower.

ChrisArchitect 2y ago

[flagged]

altairprime 2y ago
If you email the mods when two dupes both have discussion, they’ll merge them; the footer contact link has their address.
- ChrisArchitect 2y ago
  Thanks. Mods are looking for the flag already. Don't need to email them. Better would be stop posting dupes. Discuss over there on the ongoing thread.
  - altairprime 2y ago
    Flags don’t attract mod attention. Flags are handled by code. Emailing the mods cleans up the front page. Comments on dupes does not.

silisili 2y ago

One thing Samsung does to reel you in is to make ridiculous offers to existing customers. I'm not sure if Apple does the same or not. For example, they'll often list a phone for say $1000. Then offer you $800 trade in on last years model, and maybe $500 on a two year old model, both objectively much more than the phone is worth. Pair that with EPP discounts that almost everyone qualifies for, RetailMeNot sitewide codes, credit card rewards, and random Samsung offers - you can often upgrade every year if you want for very little money.

999900000999 2y ago
Samsung also has much better lower end. The iPhone SE starts at 430$, compared to 200$ for a Samsung A14. Often Samsung phones are even cheaper with a prepaid. For 90% of people that A14 is going to give you the same utility. However Apple probably has a much better margin here. They get to own the whole stack, if I buy an an Android phone I'm getting my apps from Google, my cloud storage from Google. If I buy an iPhone I'm buying apps from Apple, paying for iCloud and Apple TV.
- karmakaze 2y ago
  That A14 is surprising. It has a huge screen, decent battery, dual-sim, headphone jack, and can take a 1TB MicroSD. The one I saw didn't even have much bloat installed on it.
  - 999900000999 2y ago
    I actually was using a cheap Samsung phone( with a jack ) for a good while, but it lacked Esim. I suspect at the lower end most people aren't buying 100$ earbuds so they might as well leave the jack.
    - karmakaze 2y ago
      And on the other end can have hi-res DACs not limited by crapily-negotiated codecs.
- 2y ago

tecoholic 2y ago

Also, I walked into an electronics store the other day and could tell between an iPhone and a Samsung phone anymore. Everything looks the same. They got the “iPhone look” market covered.

97s 2y ago

I had a top tier Samsung phone the s22ultra. Within a little over a year the service basically stopped working. Samsung had tons of reports of other s22ultra with the same problem. Samsung basically said no refund no exchange. You can trade it in for 400 towards a new Samsung. This was a 1000+ dollar phone that barely made it past warranty. I will never ever use a Samsung again. It was my fault for not checking the warranty. I should have known better when a 1000+ flagship phone only has a one year warranty it can't be very good, right? I now just buy cheap phones cause that experience ruined me. Their support was so bad and they didn't care at all about the forums of people with the exact same issues. I don't know how this company is top seller. This surprises me so much.

tymscar 2y ago
I don’t know where you are from, but in the EU and UK, consumers get 4-6 years of hardware warranty, on all tech products. Look into the legislation. I got a MacBook replaced after 5 years.
- foldr 2y ago
  There is certainly no such legislation in the UK.
  - tymscar 2y ago
    Im not sure why are you so certain about it. I am living in the uk and the example I gave about the MacBook happened here. The law in question is the consumer rights act of 2015, specifically section 105. Scroll down on the page and read it. I invoked it 3 times already with different companies successfully. https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2015/15/section/19/notes?view=plain https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2015/15/section/19/note...
    - foldr 2y ago
      Section 105 explains explicitly that it's not a warranty: >For example, the statutory right may not be breached and so a consumer would not be able to obtain a remedy if, say, a very cheap kettle stopped working fully after four years, as a reasonable person might not expect a bottom of the range kettle to last that long.