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The Smartphone Sales Slowdown is Real (axios.com)
Earnings reports from Samsung and Qualcomm on Wednesday suggest a serious industrywide slowdown in smartphone sales. Samsung's report is especially telling, since it also makes displays and other components for Apple. From a report: The smartphone business is an incredibly crowded space, so a slowdown could lead to even steeper price competition. That's a potential short-term boon for consumers, but could put the hurt on a whole host of technology companies. Samsung's take: Its written outlook was terse and brief, but damning. Of its own phones, it said "[p]rofitability in the mobile business is expected to decline quarter-over-quarter due to stagnant sales of flagship models amid weak demand and an increase in marketing expenses to address the situation." Similarly, it cautioned of weak demand in its display and chip businesses, which supply components for both Samsung and its phone rivals, including Apple. Qualcomm's take: The phone chip giant also predicted a slowdown, cutting its forecast for 3G and 4G smartphones.
When my old phone (Samsung S4 note) does everything I need it to do, is quick enough and I managed to buy a replacement battery recently.
I do not need a new phone, along with its misfeatures, learning curve, and expense.
No one should be surprised. We saw this happen with computers and now we're seeing it happen with smartphones. The market is saturated, the existing installed base is more than capable of handling most workloads, and therefore fewer people are motivated to upgrade every year. You want us to buy new phones? Build them with longer battery life and less crapware/spyware. The screens are already good enough. The cameras are already good enough. The operating systems are already good enough. Gee-whiz bells and whistles aren't going to motivate us to upgrade anymore. And stop building phones with notches.
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Replaceable batteries...miss those. Have a Galaxy S6 that works perfectly fine but needs a new battery soon which is gonna be a pain to replace.
There's no new MUST HAVE features on the new model phones. Thus no impetus to spend money on them. Once 5G starts widely rolling out, there may be surge again, but my guess is the carriers will charge / throttle 5G nearly out of existence so that may not be all that cool either.