Smartphone Shipments Flat For the First Time, Says IDC

An anonymous reader writes: Smartphone vendors shipped a total of 334.9 million smartphones worldwide last quarter. This figure is up just 0.2 percent from the 334.3 million units in Q1 2015, marking the smallest year-over-year growth on record. We saw hints of this in yesterday's Apple earnings report, when the company reported an iPhone sales drop for the first time. Despite the poor state of the worldwide smartphone market, Samsung continues to dominate. In Q1 2016, the South Korean company once again shipped more smartphones than any other vendor.

Comments

Waiting for vendors to get real

[WillAffleckUW]

Why should I shell out $500 every year when I can just wait until they have something that is a real improvement in three years?

And that fits in my fricking pocketses!

I've never had one.

[Anonymous Coward]

My landline phone does everything I need a phone to do. My computer does computer stuff. I see no need to mix the two.

Re:I've never had one.

[Anonymous Coward]

My landline phone does everything I need a phone to do. My computer does computer stuff. I see no need to mix the two.

Funny you should mention that. A few days ago I saw an ad on television for Amazon's Fire phone. It shows a man and woman sitting on the couch in their living room, trying to decide what movie to watch on their phone.

Wait . . . what?

Yes, I'm old. And yes, I have actually told people to get off my lawn. But I have a 55 inch television in my living room, a 27 inch monitor on the computer I'm currently using to type this (a computer which is also quite a bit more powerful and capable than your phone or your tablet), and a 16 inch screen on my laptop (which is also quite a bit more powerful and capable than your phone or your tablet).

In what bizaarro, ass-backwards universe do I want to watch a movie on a phone. With a 5 inch screen.

After 30 years of massive improvements in technology, we are now actually going backwards. Hundreds of millions of people rushing out to buy devices that are LESS capable.

WHEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE

Re:I've never had one.

[MightyMartian]

I use mine as a router when I'm out of town. Generally the quality of hotel WiFi is so terrible that I end up tethering. I have an SSH and RDP client on my phone, not pleasant to use, but in an emergency when I have to talk to the office servers, it will do. It's a damned handy device.

Re: "Poor State"...???

[Anonymous Coward]

Despite the poor state of the worldwide smartphone market

What the fucking fuck?????

Doing a quick Google shows that total worldwide sales of phones averaged more than 300 million units per quarter in 2014 and 2015. Adding in the sales for the first quarter of this year, that's roughly 2.7 Billion phones since the beginning of 2014.

Too much is never enough.

Re:Product Maturity

[MightyMartian]

As low a creature as I am, at least I'm not an AC