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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.
I don't want to buy a new phone because they're not worth the cost. They keep breaking and their batteries die. Why would I keep spending money on these hyped up pieces of garbage that surveill me?
Smartphone tech has matured, so we dont need to upgrade every year or two year. This is a good thing. Why is every shit news site pumping out story after story on this. Is it a really a bad thing when we can consume less and save more?
Does that mean desktop PCs are coming back?
A few years ago it was trendy to depict the death of the PC, which never happened, it was just a mature market and there was no need to upgrade any more. Now it's cellphones' turn.
Why would there be a resurgence in sales? What most people have now is good enough, there's no need to upgrade any more. That doesn't mean it's dying, merely that the upgrade cycle has been broken.
Shareholders require growth. That's about it. Now how intrinsically linked are stock exchanges and capitalism?
Yeah, edit a document on a phone. Show me. And I don't mean cut&paste - write a few paragraphs of text.
A home need only one 'computer', not a computer per person. Because light games & browsing is now done on phones & tablets. That computer is still needed whenever writing more than a tweet or two is called for. Therefore, computer sales are down - but the computer is in no way 'dead'. Stuppid salesmen tend to call anything 'dead' that isn't growing though - according to such people, 'food' is dead. Except it isn't - food sell as much as ever, and employ lots of people. But of course no increase.
Tim Cook said it himself: Allowing customers to replace the batteries was part of the problem. The obvious solution is for Apple to refuse to replace them while making new phones even harder to open./s
Seriously, this crap of making electronics purposefully hard to repair is a cancer. They should be built to be easily repairable and to last. Warranties somewhat take care of the latter but there's no law to promote the former. It's not only a matter of money but also of e-waste
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.
I can boil that one down in to 1 reason.
1. The phone they have is good enough.
Smartphones are now mature. There's no huge advantage to buying a new model because it will only have minor differences. There aren't any more "killer" features to add, most improvements will not be noticed by the user, making fonts slighlty clearer, improving memory management, so on and so forth. There just isn't the impetus to upgrade any more.
Calling someone a "hater" only means you can not rationally rebut their argument.
Capitalism not only requires growth, it requires exponential growth.
Investors, i.e. capitalists, expect a return on their investment, and they expect that return to be some percentage of that investment. A percentage return on investment implies exponential growth. Would you invest in something where you expected to get your principle back and nothing else?
You can maybe imagine some form of "capitalism" where a group of leaders, chosen by some other means than how much money they have, decide how to allocate resources.
It sure seems like the wonders of modern polymers and composites should allow creation of a phone that can charge wirelessly (unlike metal), survive modest falls (unlike glass), and still provide the "luxury" feel that will convince some people to pay $1000 for a $300 item.
Your paranoia is silly on it's own, but the ridiculous inconsistency of it is even worse. You think Microsoft or Apple can't access your "idea" stored on a desktop computer running their OS?
Your response has nothing to do with the utility of phones vs desktops; it's just a nutty rant about google.
P.S. google docs isn't the only option on phones.