Smartphone sales down 22 percent in Q2, the worst performance in a decade
Smartphone sales down 22 percent in Q2, the worst performance in a decade
North American sales are bad for everyone, except, miraculously, Google.
Smartphone sales down 22 percent in Q2, the worst performance in a decade::North American sales are bad for everyone, except, miraculously, Google.
Phone price keeps going up but my paycheck keeps going down with inflation
They should really stop over saturating the market by releasing new models every year with little to no meaningful upgrades.
Even mid-range phones nowadays are good enough to last long after they stop receiving updates, it therefore makes little financial sense (for the average consumer) to buy the newest model every year, not even touching on the environmental impact.
Have they considered releasing another hard to hold glass slab exactly like the previous one?
Good. We should be using our phones for longer.
I understand 'worst sales' but 'worst performance' doesn't really fit. It's in my opinion this is a fantastic performance on the market. With right to repair, longer software support, some models with replaceable batteries, we can use the phones longer and make the industry more sustainable and consumer friendly. For the last years already, the model feature upgrades were marginal and it's fine that way.
In the future, I'd hope for further technical and regulatory development in that direction, resulting in further reduced annual sales numbers.
They doubled the price while removing core features like headphone jacks and microSD.
The people who bought phones as a status symbol ran out of money and the people who are advanced users are sticking with their old phones that are simply better until planned obsolescence forces them to buy another older model.
It's almost as if, they haven't fundamentally updated smartphones in almost a decade, and now they want $2000 for them.
Also, it's almost as if we've been in a recession for a year. Regardless of whether or not the government wants to call it a recession, we've had numerous back to back quarters with negative GDP growth. That's literally a recession.
Phone plateaued 5 years ago for the average user.
I have a one plus 6. I'm on it for hours everyday. Reading. Browsing. Listening. No gaming. Lots of pictures.
My online data ran out long before my phone data - for pictures.
Phone runs fast. No more updates so nothing changes on me anymore.
I have zero reason to update. Would I like a better camera? Sure. But not for 1200$ I don't.
Could my battery last longer? Yeah. Sure. But I can replace it if I want for 20-40$
My next phone will probably be a refurbished last Gen phone. Nothing more then 400 I imagine.
Good. They should never have been that high anyways
like desktop PCs
like DVD players?
no innovation, no need for a new device
apple seems to have quit innovating and google is just a fat fuck that is so lazy their core product search has gotten shit.
nokia nokia lol
Maybe they should bring back some form-factor diversity that niche consumer segments could gravitate toward, instead of every manufacturer targeting only the largest (and blandest) portion of the pie and ignoring the rest of it. If it's not clear, I am holding out for some decent "mini-sized" Android option.
Partly because everybody's finances are stretched pretty thin, but also partly because phones got Good Enough like 6 years ago and so at this point you basically replace one when it breaks and replacement cost exceeds repair costs unless you're an enthusiast who demands the latest and greatest.... which is why the lucrously short support window for security patches on most Android devices is obscene. I know the technical reasons for them, but they're still unacceptable.
finally some positive news.
Well.. do we all need to change our perfectly fine, advanced and fast pocket computer every year just to have always the latest -> IMO No.
Good for the environment that it's a bad business year.
Maybe because the only "innovations" that can be made to the smartphone is new cameras and new form factors, and only one of those is being focused on
Cause they keep making them shittier and shittier. Like I can't replace my battery like a fairphone, replace all the parts, have a microsd slot and fingerprint reader like the older phones. People complaining about size and weight. Check out the Samsung S5, what was fucking wrong with that? Worked fine and waterproof. Fucking bitchasses keep complaining about how it's not possible when it's been done for many years already.
Two cents on the headphone jack issue folks bring up all the time. The convenience of 3.5 mm is great and valid. Totally agree.
However, I use and own a lot of wired higher end headphones and a dongle DAC is just better audio quality than the 3.5mm jack. Let me explain.
3.5mm jacks means the phone's on board DAC is doing the work and outputting an analog stereo signal. You are stuck with whatever, typically sub-par, DAC is built into your phone. Yes, some phones have better DACs than others, but it is a challenge to sort out and is often not a priority for most manufacturers.
With type C dongle you can escape your phone's limitations and use dongles with audio features like fully balanced audio because the signal stays digital from your phone to the dongle. Personally, I'm a fan of 4.4 mm balanced connection, as most of my headphones will run balanced. This is something I could never do with 3.5mm alone.
DDHifi, XDUOO, ifi, etc makes some great 'audiophile' - dumb title but you know what I mean - DACs.
I often don't hear this side of the issue discussed.
Everyone is poor from inflation and a million different subscription services and smartphone makers haven't done anything new in years so there's no point in getting a new phone unless the old one breaks.
My Samsung phones keep "mysteriously" going to shit after 18 to 22 months so I might try an iPhone when my current one shits the bed. Hopefully they will get their head out of their ass and reduce/remove the cutout.
Permanently Deleted
Good.
Contract subsidies are kind of coming back in the form of "trade in bill credits.". Previously you'd sign a 2 year contract and they would subsidize your phone, however; I just got $800 of trade in credit at Verizon for a phone they normally give $150 for.
The catch, of course there are many... the bill credits are over 3 years, and in my case fully offset the cost of the monthly phone purchase price; if you leave you need to pay off the remaining balance, and if you upgrade you lose your credits. Also you need to be on an unlimited plus plan.
However; I now have a new phone with no additional monthly payments. The last Samsung I had made it 5 years, and the new one actually has a serviceable battery!
I'm not really surprised, smartphones kinda hit this point of "good enough for most people's purposes" 3-4y ago and short of an actual reason to upgrade like the 4g-5g switchover there isn't a lot of incentive for most people to throw down $400-1k for a new phone every couple of years.
I would have happily kept my OnePlus 7T for a few more years if the network switchover didn't require new hardware.
Personally I don't need a faster smartphone at this point, if anything motivates me to buy a new one it's usually better radios, better battery runtime and better cameras. The rest of the gewgaws don't matter much for daily use.
My Huawei Mate 10 pro (2017) was the last phone that felt like an upgrade. Everything since then has been better in some respects, worse in others. Just a replacement for a phone that is physically too broken to be used any longer.
I don't think I'll ever spend €1000 or more for a phone anymore, even though I could afford it. I'm just not willing to spend that much money on a phone that offers hardly anything new. Maybe if they finally make a fairphone with a decent camera, I would pay a premium for repairability so I can use it for more than 3 years before it inevitably falls apart...
I have a Samsung note 20. I got it some time in 2021, I think. I only replaced it because my previous Note 20 fell out of it's mount on my motorcycle handlebar on the highway, and while I apparently have international calls, this doesn't mean the phone can be run over by an International.
Before I got the original ill-fated Samsung in 2021, I was using a Moto X4 that I bought in 2017. That one still works, but the battery dies fast, so I use it as a screen for a camera drone.
If I were to go buy the latest Samsung Note, I seriously doubt it would be noticeably better than my Note 20. I normally wouldn't bother to get a phone this nice, but I wanted to treat myself, just once.
We're at a point now where you don't need to upgrade every 6 months or a year. Phones work perfectly fine for 2 to even 5 years now with updates.
Micro updates such as slightly faster processing power or a slightly better camera is not appealing at all.
Foldables is where the next smartphone market is but the technology is way too young and they're mechanically fragile resulting in problems within only months of purchase.
Good
Google and Samsung are winning and smaller vendors are being squeezed out.
I'm a stickler for a headphone jack so I just replaced the battery in my 4a instead of buying a new one. Not sure how to proceed with the EOL security updates but Lineage is always an option. If they would just release a phone with a headphone jack I'd have a new phone next week.
I miss my Samsung S4 so much. That thing was amazing. It lasted like, 8 years or something, the longest by far of any of my phones.
I'm using a Samsung Galaxy S10 for over three years now and I don't see a reason why I should get a new one anytime soon.
Time to look for the next big thing!
This is the best summary I could come up with:
Canalys has some gruesome new numbers out for the North American smartphone market in Q2 2023, detailing what it's calling the "worst quarterly performance for over a decade."
Only a single company survived this quarter unscathed, and it's actually Google!
The biggest loss on the chart is actually "others," down 43 percent, likely representing the further consolidation of the Android market.
Canalys explains some of this by saying the low-end market "will continue to struggle as prepaid demand dwindles."
Despite the overall losses, Canalys says, "Apple and Samsung boosted their premium segment shipments with 25% and 23% growth respectively in Q2 2023."
Canalys expects a bit of a recovery in 2024, where it's projecting a 3 percent increase.
The original article contains 333 words, the summary contains 118 words. Saved 65%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!
Oops, theu made last year's phones too good.
Watch the planned obsele
Good
I hit my limit with hope much I’m willing to pay for a phone. Unless my contracting work needs the best phone I’ll be capping myself at a price by getting not the latest phone.
consumerism is in decline (as it should), but reasons are financial
what is left to spend to when you care about your money?
if driven by basic fears, survivor and fear of death, that would be food and medicine, products for next "technical" revolution
I did upgrade my phone this year... to an iPhone 13, which I can pay a few dollars a month to AT&T for. And I only did that because my XR's battery was dying. I would have been fine to keep it indefinitely. I see no good reason to upgrade and really, the only reason I had to was built-in obsolescence. A 5-year-old phone should not have a battery that goes to shit. Maybe 10 years old.
So divert the flow to africa maybe? where they do not have smart phones yet? Oh -- they do not have electricity networks there, so maybe sell them with solar chargers.