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Worldwide Smartphone Shipments Down For First Time Ever (theregister.co.uk)
According to Gartner, global sales of smartphones have declined year-on-year for the first time since the research company started tracking the global smartphone market in 2004. "Global sales of smartphones to end users totaled nearly 408 million units in the fourth quarter of 2017, a 5.6 percent decline over the fourth quarter of 2016," reports Gartner. The Register reports: In Gartner's Q4 sales stats, Samsung maintained a narrow lead in global volume shipments of smartphones -- but every major (top five) vendor outside of those based in China saw unit shipments slip. Several major factors caused the market shrinkage, said Anshul Gupta, research director at Gartner. "First, upgrades from feature phones to smartphones have slowed right down due to a lack of quality 'ultra-low-cost' smartphones and users preferring to buy quality feature phones. Second, replacement smartphone users are choosing quality models and keeping them longer, lengthening the replacement cycle of smartphones. Moreover, while demand for high quality, 4G connectivity and better camera features remained strong, high expectations and few incremental benefits during replacement weakened smartphone sales," Gupta added. This is a characteristic of the emerging markets, where all the action is -- not mature markets like the UK or USA. Samsung leap-frogged Apple by virtue of its sales declining slower than the market average -- Sammy's numbers were 3.6 per cent to 74.02 million units.
People are getting smarter about purchases. Unfortunately, smartphones aren't getting smarter. I haven't bought a new phone since my S5, though the OLED (what a terrible technology) screen is suffering and I will need to replace it soon. People don't want 12 megapixels over 10 or 5. At a certain point, shooting in higher resolution just makes for ungainly file sizes for no real benefit. No one really uses voice control serioiusly, and all we get with each generation is more midle-of-the-bell-curve junk and bloatware. Since my S5 Samsung deleted infrared, HDMI, and FM radio - they tried even deleting the SD slot, and they give what bac in return? An OLED screen with even more density that degrades even faster. Great work!
All the Q4 2017 vs Q4 2016 are messy this year - there was an extra week in 2016. Most journalists are oblivious to it... Gartner being Gartner.... who knows...
The smartphone industry is starting to mature. Smartphones have gotten to the point where the delta between a 4 year old smartphone and a brand new one isn't very big anymore. The same was not the case 4 years ago. In a way, the smartphone is going the the way of the PC, 4 year old models are "good enough" so the 2 year upgrade cycle is going away, becoming more like every 6 years.
The natural consequence that is a smaller number of higher quality, higher end, and more expensive phones will be made, and will be used for 6 years before replacement. The same thing is happening with the PC, where slim metal cases and $1000+ prices are now the norm, the cheap glossy plastic $400 PC that gets thrown out every 3 years isn't selling anymore. Overall I think its a good thing that smartphones are starting to see longer refresh cycles, it will be better for the environment, and hopefully they won't depreciate quite so quickly.