We're No Longer in Smartphone Plateau. We're in the Smartphone Decline. (nymag.com)

The days of double-digit smartphone growth are over -- and the next decade may start to see smartphone sales decline. A report adds: From roughly 2007 until 2013, the smartphone market grew at an astonishing pace, posting double-digit growth year after year, even during a global recession. They were the good years, the type that would inspire a Scorsese montage: millions and then billions of smartphones going out; billions and then trillions of dollars in rising company valuations; every year new models of phones hitting the market, held up triumphantly at events that were part sales pitch, part tent revival. (To nail the Scorsese effect, imagine "Jumpin' Jack Flash" playing while you think about it.)

But just like every Scorsese movie, the party ends. Smartphone growth began to slow starting in 2013 or 2014. In 2016, it was suddenly in the single digits, and in 2017 global smartphone shipments, for the first time, actually declined -- fewer smartphones were sold than in 2017 than in 2016. Every smartphone manufacturer is now facing a world where, at best, they can hope for single-digit growth in smartphone sales -- and many seem to be preparing for a world where they face declines.

Comments

Prices too damn high

[Anonymous Coward]

Everyone I know "wants" a new phone, but they don't want to pay a grand.

Re:Prices too damn high

[ShanghaiBill]

Everyone I know "wants" a new phone, but they don't want to pay a grand.

You have it backwards. People DON'T want new phones. Their existing phones are "good enough", so they are waiting longer and longer between upgrades.

Since upgrade cycles are longer, the phone makers can only maintain revenues by pushing up the price of new phones, and adding silly features to justify the higher price. So far this strategy is working, with record revenues even in the face of falling unit sales.

I have a 4 year old iPhone 6. It works fine. I have no plans to replace it.

Everyone is making it more complicated than it is

[KixWooder]

The market is saturated. Phones are good enough and not enough people care about a new camera to justify buying a new one. Smartphones, from any manufacturer, are not status symbols anymore.

Why do we need article after article to tell us the obvious?

Still waiting for a another legitimate flagship

[nightfire-unique]

I'm still waiting for a legitimate flagship phone to replace my Note 3.

Every phone released after it has been worse, by some measure:

- Missing key sensors (ie. thermometer, which is super useful while winter camping)
- Missing the headphone/mic jack
- Missing physical home and back/task switch buttons
- Having locked bootloaders that are difficult to deal with
- Having poor support for LineageOS/AOSP
- Being constructed of metal/glass that breaks/bends easily compared to plastic, along with bizarre screen curvatures
- Having wear components, such as batteries, glued in and non-replaceable, limiting the lifespan to ~18 months

I have literally thousands of US dollars to spend on a new phone, and can't wait for the day something is released which rivals the Note 3.

Re:Still waiting for a another legitimate flagship

[Anonymous Coward]

As for temp sensor, i dont think the note4 has one aside from the sensor for the SOC temp. I can't see an ambient temp sensor being all that accurate seeing as the phone is generally carried in a pocket or cause of the heat generated internally by the phone while in use. a $5 digital thermometer you could hang on your bag would probably provide far superior results.

First it happened with PCs.

[doubledown00]

Now with smart phones. This leaves manufacturers with two options: 1) Open new markets, or 2) Actually innovate. Unless a whole bunch of new tribes are discovered, the former ain't happening. Which means we all hold our breath and wait for #2.

Until that happens we should all prepare ourselves for wave after wave of dull non-innovative over-priced dreck.

"Smart"-phones is wrong.

[Quakeulf]

They call them smartphones but they behave like dumbphones, making the user and everyone else involved dumber. They are designed to keep you dumb. The novelty of the name "smartphone" has worn off a long time ago.

Wait a minute

[93 Escort Wagon]

I know Penny Marshall wasn't the most attractive woman in the world - but I don't know how someone would confuse her with Martin Scorsese.

Depends on how you measure plateau

[Oswald McWeany]

If we're talking new sales of phones, yes we've reached a plateau. If we're talking about % of world population that use a cell phone... no, we haven't reached a plateau and won't for a long time.

The main difference is, phone sellers raised their prices so much that people want to hold onto their phones longer. When a new phone costs $200 you don't mind replacing it in a few years. When a new phone costs $1000 you would be peeved if you were forced to replace it in two years.

Limiting factor

[Shotgun]

For every computer that must interact with humans, there is a limiting factor....the human.

This happened to desktops. They got so fast that the biggest slice of CPU time went to waiting on me, the memory was big enough to hold anything I could conceivably ever want to work with, and I couldn't take enough pictures to fill the hard drive.

So people moved to laptops, because they were becoming just as powerful but portable. Then they became just as powerful, and the point of buying a new one went away.

So people moved to phones, which were more portable. I can't think of any app I have that doesn't spend more time waiting on me than I does processing. There is no point of adding more megapixels to camera, and it stores more pictures than I can be bothered to cycle through. Other than a broken phone (and, I bought a Kyocera this time to avoid that scenario) what is the point of spending $1k on another one that will just spend MORE time waiting on me?