Woah Apple lost the top spot in a quarter when they don’t release any phones, but Samsung does.
Only sort of related, but it’s kind of insane how many different phones Samsung releases. Checking GSMArena, they’ve apparently released an average of two phones per month over the last year.
Seems a bit overkill to me.
Are they all kind of the same, or do they serve different purposes?
I know people often complain about how there aren’t any small phones anymore… that’s often because, if a company only releases a phone once a year (or less) they’re going to have a hell of a lot less variety. Because most companies are going to go for the general market, not the niche market.
Sadly I don’t think even with all these they have released a decent high performance small phone. At least not to US market.
No one big releases a small phone because no one buys them. Not even the people who whine and complaints about no small phone offering buys the small phones when they’re offered. It’s way too niche a market to break even.
No one big releases a small phone because no one buys them.
Except we don’t have any good data to say why. Do people buy a bigger flagship over a smaller model that has older technology? Yes, but the only thing we can say with confidence from that is that people want the latest technology. The closest comparison we can make is Apple’s Max/Plus and non-Max/Plus versions, which offer essentially the same model in two sizes. The smaller size consistently sells better. It’s also cheaper. Does it sell better because it’s smaller or because it’s cheaper? Probably both, actually. But as long as nobody offers a small flagship (since Apple stopped making them entirely and switched to larger flagships), nobody can say for sure how well they’d sell.
The phone makers can say for sure because they have years of market and sales data on them, and a huge amount of r&d lol
No, that’s precisely my point: they don’t because no major phone manufacturer has simultaneously sold both a large and compact flagship. And when there are legitimately comparable models in different sizes, the smaller size fairly reliably sells better.
We do. The smallest iPhones, back when the iPhone had three sizes versions were consistently the less sold, by a wide margin. They still had old new stock years after the production halted. Even the modern small phones specifically made to address that niche market, underperform and end up with unsold stock on hand, despite having small production runs to begin with. This is publicly available info you can find googling for a few seconds. There are extensive essays made by journalist that always start hopefully looking for the perfect small phone, and end up discovering that none are made because they don’t sell at all. There’s not enough people who want a small phone (and I’m one of those people) to even call it a niche market.
Here’s Marques Brownlee’s breakdown of the issues and data available about small phones.
The smaller phones were not comparable models. They were a lower-tier product with fewer features. This contrasts with the regular and Plus/Max versions where it’s very much positioned as the same phone in two sizes.
Are they all kind of the same, or do they serve different purposes?
Different performance tiers and feature sets. You could spend anywhere from $100 to $1500.
The A series has a headphone jack, but doesn’t support wireless charging. Current tiers are 0, 1, 2, 5, and 7. Not every generation has a tier 7 offering. Tier 5 and 7 are close to S series performance, but much cheaper and with worse cameras.
The S series has a wireless charging, but no headphone jack. Comes in standard, plus, and ultra sizes. Better performance than the A series. All the same processor, but bigger sizes can mean more RAM, storage, and better cameras. These ones are billed as premium phones and have a premium price point.
The Fold and Flip are neat, but not generally worth the price. The Fold is better overall, but both have issues with creases. I’d generally recommend skipping the Flip. The Fold can be neat if you really want the larger screen, but an A or S series is generally a better choice.
Yeah probably there are other factors in the play here too. I agree, it’s definitely overkill, but it seems this spam phones tactic is working well for their revenues then.
You say that until you need a specific niche phone and find a Samsung version of it, a branch you know is consistent and trustworthy.
Keep in mind most of them are barely different from each other. It’s mostly a regional thing with laws, but a lot of them will recycle the panels or SoCs.
Tune in next month when a different company says the exact opposite
Investors are closely watching for updates on artificial intelligence development at Apple, which has so far spoken little about incorporating the AI technology into its devices.
I fucking hate apple but they’re on the right side of this fucking AI train.
They’ve had an ai assistant baked into everything for years, though it barely even registers as ai because it’s so shit but that’s what siri is.
Siri isn’t ai based though. Far from it.
Probably 90% of what companies call AI these days isn’t AI based either.
It absolutely is, it’s machine learning and natural language processing. It’s not exactly the same as chatGPT and often called weak ai but we’ll be calling chatGPT weak ai in a couple of years when we’ve moved on from LLMs
I don’t want to disappoint, but…
Don’t these two go back and forth like every other year for the past several years?
Probably - but this is a shitty metric anyway. First because the two companies are not competing for the same space. And second because you should really be measuring active users - not device purchases.
you should really be measuring active users - not device purchases.
Why? Device purchases is a measurement of how well the company sells while active users shows how reliable the product is. One is good for business, the other is believed to be less so, ar least by the current batch of CEOs
Xiaomi picking up the sales Apple lost by moving manufacturing out of China. They had to know that move would tank their Chinese user base.
Xiaomi has been partly manufacturing in India for a while now
But they’re Chinese owned, China still gets a cut, a big cut, of the buisness they generate. China gets nothing from Apple.
How would moving manufacturing change Chinese ownership? I don’t get your argument.
It doesn’t. Which is why Xiaomi still generates money for China while Apple does not.
Then I don’t get your opening statement at all.
Also, Apple still manufactures a lot in China, which generates economy through job openings.
Not really a lot. They have some manufacturing, but more than most of it’s out of china by now. The chinese economy grows more when chinese citizens buy Xiaomi than it does when they buy Apple, I don’t know what’s confusing about that. It’s like saying buying Ford is better for the American economy than buying a BYD car made in Mexico.
Ngl, the Samsung foldables look sick as hell. But I’m not ready to go back to OneUI bloat or whatever they’re doing with SamsungAI.
You are correct, oneui is still bloated and awful but their flagship processors are getting good enough that you don’t feel the bloat quite as painfully as you used to.
I swear to god, 90% of “feeling the bloat” is completely artificial. Go to dev settings and turn up the speed on all the animations. Everything is faster.
My biggest issue is the settings menu being a fucking mess. The new categories suck hard. Wanna see an overview of your storage? Well it used to be under “usage” with your data and battery, but data usage got moved to “connections” with bluetooth and wifi. Now data usage lives under “battery and device care”, conveniently placed 6th from the bottom of the list for easy access.
Had the fold since 2. The Fold 5 is a tank compared to the Fold 3. I have dropped my fold 5 from a moving motorcycle in the rain. The Fold 3 was the most problematic. My wife has the Fold 4 and it is ok.
I recommend the warranty on all these phones.
We’ve had mixed results. Wife and I both had Galaxy Z Flip4. I dropped mine repeatedly and it’s still going strong (though I have since upgraded). Wife never abused hers and the inner screen started dying right after the warranty expired. Probably more luck of the draw than flip related.
Can’t recommend unfortunately. My wifes Flip3 was repaired two times, and now the plastic film on the display loosened a third time. She now bought a fairphone.
Maybe the flip is awesome but the fold is a pain the fucking ass
This is the best summary I could come up with:
Global smartphone shipments increased 7.8% to 289.4 million units during January-March, with Samsung, at 20.8% market share, clinching the top phonemaker spot from Apple.
The iPhone-maker’s steep sales decline comes after its strong performance in the December quarter when it overtook Samsung as the world’s No.1 phone maker.
Xiaomi, one of China’s top smartphone makers, occupied the third position with a market share of 14.1% during the first quarter.
South Korea’s Samsung, which launched its latest flagship smartphone lineup — Galaxy S24 series — in the beginning of the year, shipped more than 60 million phones during the period.
The Cupertino, California-based company in June will hold its Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC), where it will highlight updates to the software powering iPhones, iPads, and other Apple devices.
Investors are closely watching for updates on artificial intelligence development at Apple, which has so far spoken little about incorporating the AI technology into its devices.
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In hard economic times, high cost things have to hang
