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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?
... so worst ever is probably exaggerated here
Never mind sales numbers, all Apple has to do is keep increasing the price of new models in proportion to falling sales numbers.
Revenue stays the same, and costs even go down! Shareholders happy. How can the plan fail?
This is how Android's problematic security updates will become a real problem. People will now keep old unpatched Android devices for longer, so all it will take is one golden exploit (think of Stagefright but self-propagating like MS Blaster of old) to bring down the Android ecosystem. Because most devices in the ecosystem are unpatchable.
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?
Most people use their phones for messaging, calling people and scrolling through websites or looking up information. That can be done well on even the cheapest modern phones. I think a lot of people are addicted to their phones, but there's not this need to have the latest and greatest anymore as long as the apps run ok.
actually it was the worse year for smartphone prices. if the prices were reasonable, they would have been no problems with shipments.
Most of those people already own cars as well. Doesn't mean they won't need a new car one day. Sooner or later, smartphone sales will stabilize the same way cars did after WWII. Some people will buy a new smartphone every year, just because that's what they do. Others will use their Galaxy 5 until it finally dies before they buy a new one.
When people only buy phones for replacement and do not increase the frequency of buying new phones nor do new customers appear on the scene, you have a stagnating market. Stagnating markets != growing market => economists get in panic, as growth is required for capitalism (in its present form). That is the concept the post you are answering to is refering to.
much like with desktop/laptops there isn't much need to upgrade even a mid-level smartphone these days.
which features does it have to warant me to spend a lot of money for such a device?
cpu power is adequate and even storage is not really an issue most of the time anymore.
a better camera? the current offerings are probably more then good enough for most people.
On a long enough timeline, the survival rate for everyone drops to zero.
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.
Capitalism does not require growth. Bullshit expectations of increased profit revenue requires growth.
Look, I get by on X Euro every year. If I don't increase my profits every year...my god, think of the consequences to the capitalism!
I don't know why everyone is brainwashed into thinking capitalism = unstopped growth and socialism = stalin.... a little of both with expectations of peace and happiness instead of growth and war would make a big difference towards unchecked carbon release.
Of course that's what various hippies since Jesus have been saying, so who gives a shit. The smart phone market is drying up! Fire the lowest paid employees and drive the stock back up!
1.4 billion?? Think about that as a percentage of the world's population. Holy carp.
And that's vs. the whole world population. What fraction of that group is actually the market for what is essentially as luxury consumer product?
This has to be one of the most amazingly successful luxury items of all time.
What should astonish is that it was ever more successful.
However, capitalism requires growth
People keep saying this as if it were self evident, but it's just nonsense. Capitalism tends to create and encourage growth, but there's nothing about it which requires growth.
I just bought a Doogee phone for about £45. It's to replace my old Galaxy S5 mini which we were using as a "sonos remote control" in the kitchen. Sonos are upgrading their app and whatever version of android the S5 runs is too old for it. So my upgrade prompt was bloody Sonos :-(
Anyway, the doogee runs Android 8.1, has a big bright screen, comes with a case and a screen protector and (so far) looks like a great replacement for the remote control. At this sort of price, it makes me slightly regret spending £10 buying a new battery for the samsung a few months back. My only slight gripe is that there's no 'desk dock' for it as the power socket is at the top.
For those looking for an actual phone, it's got dual sim, removable battery, headphone jack and most of the features you would want, but it is quite heavy. However, when we need another 'remote control' somewhere else in the house, I'll be buying another. Now the S5 is freed up, I'm on the prowl for a different OS to stick on it...
Shareholders require growth. That's about it. Now how intrinsically linked are stock exchanges and capitalism?
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.
The ironic thing that Samsung knows how to do this. They make tanks and fighter jets, for crying out loud. They know what they are doing when it comes to composites and materials. It wouldn't be hard for them to make a ceramic back that can take heavy abuse, but still give that top notch phone feel. Or, they can take a step back and go back to machined aluminum which has proven itself to be a decent phone material.
Exactly this. Only the shareholders who buy stocks specifically looking for growth are demanding growth. More conservative investors tend to buy stocks which have a strong history of paying out regular, predictable dividends.
In the absence of growth companies would just need to focus more on paying dividends, and investors would have to tame their get-rich-quick ambitions. The market would still work fine.
Remember how the PC market started stalling at about the time of introduction of Windows Vista a decade ago, and then went into a full decline by 2012? People who don't play 3D games started to keep their PCs for 6-7 years because PC with Core 2 Duo was enough for checking mail, social networks, or browsing the web. The smartphones have reached the same plateau.
I recall how horrible were the early iPhones. They reminded me the PCs of the 1990s. Despite all the innovations, there was no denying that say iPhone 3G or iPhone 4S were ridiculously and painfully slow for things like web browsing. Watching video or reading the ebook on 3-inch something display was terrible. But the technology has moved on, and I myself use a 2016 Honor 6X phone which cost me 200 bucks (when it was new). It's has a big bright screen, good camera, the security patch level from Dec 2018, battery to last at least a day and runs all apps that I actually use flawlessly. Sometimes I entertain the idea of getting a 2019 phone, but at the same time I just wonder, don't fix what's not broken.
Shareholders require profits, not growth. Growth is desirable because it's usually coupled with bigger profits, but is not necessary. In the absence of growth, profits can come from increased economic efficiency alone.
e.g. I own a dairy farm, you own a chicken farm. I have a refrigerator full of milk and would like something to eat. You have a refrigerator full of eggs and would like something to drink. The efficiency of our economics is improved if I trade some of my milk for some of your eggs. That is, eggs are more valuable to me than milk; milk is more valuable to you than eggs.
So when we trade milk for eggs, both of us come out winners (we both profit from the transaction). I give up undesired milk to gain desired eggs. You give up undesired eggs to gain desired milk. This is what they mean when they say economics is not a zero-sum game. The physical goods and services may be zero sum, but their value is positive sum (because the value to each participant is different). In other words, economics is not just about making stuff; it's also about distributing that stuff for maximum benefit. You and I can continue our milk and egg trade arrangement in perpetuity. It will continue to benefit us (profit us) even though there's no growth, and even if there's no change.