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2018 Was the 'Worst Year Ever' For Smartphone Shipments (cnbc.com)
2018 was the worst year ever for smartphone shipments, according to the latest figures from research firm IDC. It means Apple isn't the only company fighting to keep people interested in buying new phones every year. From a report: IDC said 1.4 billion smartphones were sold in 2018, marking a 4.1 percent decline for the year in an industry that's accustomed to rapid growth. In 2014, as well, 1.4 billion phones were shipped, which means the industry seems to have regressed about 5 years. Shipments shrank 4.9 percent for the fourth quarter of 2018, IDC said. Apple said earlier this week that iPhone revenues were 15 percent lower than last year. CEO Tim Cook said the strengthened dollar, an economic slowdown in China, lower subsidies on phones and its battery replacement program contributed to the drop in sales. Samsung phone shipments declined 5.5 percent and Apple's slipped 11.5 percent during the quarter, IDC said. But Huawei, which was able to capitalize on China, saw a 33.6 percent bump in shipments. Chinese vendors Oppo and Xiaomi also increased shipments, IDC said.
The people who only used computers for social media will only use phones for the same thing, sure. But what made the desktop unnecessary is all of the other things which you can now do with a phone. Document viewing and editing, music storage and playback (or even composition), photo capture manipulation and categorization, finance management, tax preparation and filling ... phones can now do the vast majority of the things we used to need computers for. So what's left? Not much that would interest 95% of home users. Business/professional use is a different thing.
From what I've seen amongst friends and acquaintances, there are only three reasons most people upgrade these days:
1. The battery life has decreased to the point that it's unusable, and they don't seem to understand that you can change the battery.
2. The phone stops working and is out of warranty.
3. They're on a "plan" which amortizes the cost of the phone over several years, it's time for a renewal, and the provider has offered them a "deal" which they think is good.
Personally I just upgrade on a 2-3 year cycle and buy second hand phones which are about a year old. By that point they cost half or less of the original price, and they've been on the market long enough for me to evaluate the relative performance and reliability based on consumer reviews. Plus I can check and make sure they have an active development community on XDA and a way to unlock the bootloader.