A lot of people get phones as part of a contract (here in Europe at least), and that's usually a year and a half or two years. After that you might as well take the phone upgrade.
When I tried to get internet here in Spain a few years ago, I asked Vodafone how much it cost. 40 Euros per month (then add on tax). I asked how much it was for a bundle with internet a phone and a mobile contract. Same price.
I do see younger people with a lot of lat generation iPhones probably as handed downs from people on contracts.
Signals to the end of an era, smartphones have matured and are becoming ubiquitous like laptops. Moreover, the most profitable smartphones belong to Apple which held 86% of smartphone profits generated in the industry in 2018. Samsung was competing more in the mid to affordable segments so it was bound to start losing once others started catching up, especially since its Chinese competitors are basically giving up profits for growth in the affordable to medium segments.
They make high end phones, but their sales volume doesn't make up for the margins. In terms of manufactured phone volume, the Galaxy line makes up a tiny fraction of their total sales.
I feel like the vast majority of the Android ecosystem foot gunned itself pushing its way out of reasonably priced device segments. There really are no modern equivalents to the Moto G or Nexus 5 or even early One Plus phones in the $150-$350 range. Its garbage up through $200, then a giant gap to $1000 phones.
Especially in the tablet segment. I can get why Google didn't want to try to single-handedly prop up the form factor with first party devices, but the last good (and reasonably priced) Android tablets remain the second generation Nexus 7 and Nvidia Shield from half a decade ago.
Nokia, OnePlus, Xiaomi, Huawei, in order of hardware + software combo. Nokia had slightly less interesting hardware but runs stock Android (= good update policy).
Loving my Xiaomi Mi A2 Lite aka the Redmi 6 I think.
In India this phone costs $100. It comes with Android One.. monthly updates directly from Google.
I'm not sure why technical people still prefer iOS. Such a PITA when it comes to development and app store (register! password!) and transferring files.
Im curious if people find Samsung products top of the line. I thought they were a big advertiser similar to Apple, selling low to mid range products at heavy markups.
My S5 was awful with multiple bugs, quickly dead samsung SSD, my grandfathers smart TV was slow despite being bought in 2018, and horror stories about Samsung appliances.
Convenient narrative, but it's likely that this has more to do with their component business (nand, DRAM, LCDs, etc.) than their smartphone business. Samsung overproduced a bunch of memory just as demand fell through the floor. [1]
Also, your article on Apple's smartphone profit share is from April 2018, so more like 2017 than 2018. Not sure how relevant that is to 2019 earnings.
What about the fact that the Chinese manufacturers are taking over the Asian and European market, over Samsung and Apple who are both losing market share? They might not be making as much money, as they run much tighter profit markets, but they are basically taking over the market by undercutting the competition.
I think that narrative is roughly correct, but I think it doesn't affect profit of neither Samsung nor Apple in the short term. Who knows about long term.
What about it? I'm sure that could also be affecting their earnings, we'll have to wait for the earnings report to find out the extent of it. But the current analysis and reporting right now points to major issues in the component side of the business.
Also, remember that Samsung is still selling these components to Huawei, Oppo, etc., so it's not a total loss when they take market share.
On the other hand, Samsung's smartphone market share is pretty important for its nascent non-memory component business, because Huawei won't use Exynos, neither AP nor 4G and 5G modem.
>On the other hand, Samsung's smartphone market share is pretty important for its nascent non-memory component business, ...
not sure why that matters? the nascent non-memory component business is not the major cost-center, or money-maker for the company. Samsung's doesn't always use internal parts in their products -- take for instance, Sharp, which had been Samsung's LCD panel supplier until Foxconn took over. There are also rumors that some lower end Samsung smartphone use displays made by BOE.
>What about the fact that the Chinese manufacturers are taking over the Asian and European market
Two independent industries. Those Chinese manufacturers still have to use memory products made by either Samsung, Hynix or Micron. It does not matter which smartphone OEMs make more profit or has greater marketshare. Those three DRAM makers combined account for 90% of global DRAM supplies. China is not going to have its own domestic (major) DRAM manufacturer anytime soon.
Absolutely I agree that AppleInsider's nonsensical fanboi narrative has no place.
This is all part of business cycle that went a bit berserk in 2016 when Samsung decided to increase their capex significantly to boost their capacity to capture greater marketshare in spite of the obvious resulting glut. Yes, consumers benefitted from plummeting prices, but most DRAM makers had to cut capex and capacity to deal with the DRAM glut and plummeting prices in 2016. The lower capex and capacity likewise eventually led to the price hike of 2017-2018 that we just witnessed. During this rise, the DRAM market participants again started expanding and we are seeing prices falling again. Barring unseen major technical breakthrough or extraordinary market demand (no, I don't mean Apple's market share or profit margin, fanbois), this cycle would continue...
While your comment looks professional it's complete nonsense and has nothing to do with the topic in question. Typical Hacker News commentary in other words.
"Chinese competitors are basically giving up profits for growth"
It interesting how Apple have managed to capture so much of the profit in the industry, and consumers are willing to go with them rather than one of their essentially subsidised rivals.
I wonder how long this situation can continue for, some kind of reversion to the mean has to happen eventually.
Samsung's problems are just beginning. They're getting destroyed on every front, and basically all comes from China.
On the phone front, they were used to selling phones at premium pricing only relying on their brand name. You don't have to look past Nokia or Blackberry to see how that will end. They're not really innovative, and while their devices are generally quality, they've pushed the price point too high. Xiaomi does 90 percent of it for 30 percent of the price. Huawei does 200 percent for about the same price.
On the chip front, TSMC has been outpacing them for years, and is getting all the contracts.
The only thing I can think of that Samsung does better than anyone else is OLED, and others are catching up very quickly.
I think Samsung will join the ranks of HTC and LG as also rans in short time...
I appreciate the insight. I don't know anything about that business, and also realize that Samsung as a whole is a huge conglomerate with many things I don't track. Being chip based, I'm assuming they have increasing competition from China though, no?
No. There actually has been a good news from China on DRAM recently. Fujian Jinhua, the leading Chinese DRAM competitor, is rumored to be exiting the business.
Sony has always been an enigma to me. They release devices that appear midrange or yesteryear, and I get excited because I generally test devices in that range. Then I see the price and wonder how they're even in the business anymore.
They lost me with the music CD root kits... IT's nearly impossible to avoid stuff that uses sony components, but haven't bought anything labelled sony since.
A friend once put it really well: "Sony is a company with brilliant engineers and amazing consumer feature ideas. Then all the good ones get crippled by their lawyers and the media industry sycophants."
I won't recommend Xiaomi to anyone I like, and the demise of Samsung phones in China is more "emotionally" driven, yes Samsung phones are expensive, but so do Oppo and Vivo.
I'm not anti Samsung, and having used Xiaomi, definitely not pro for them. That said, it's hard to deny the value they offer.
In the premium market, Huawei is lapping them. Samsung used to vie for best camera. Now they're with Apple in lagging far behind the Pixel and P series.
Like I said, Huawei is great at marketing at least in China, their patriotism marketing has been so successful there.
>In the premium market, Huawei is lapping them
Where? In China? My personal opinion is when you dive deep, Huawei is more about marketing hype than substance. The tri-camera is Israel tech, they rely on Samsung for memory chip and OLED, things like their battery life achieved by furiously killing background apps might spur outcry elsewhere.
I think this is also where Amazon is leading the future to：Those who market the best win.
> their patriotism marketing has been so successful there
If your goes to r/Android, Huawei is at least as popular as Samsung, and even more of a topic maker. And that has been the case for sometime now.
I have a Samsung S10E, but that is because I can't own a Huawei in US, for there is no customer support here.
TBH, S10 is the best phone Samsung has made in THREE years and I am quite happy with it. The past gens of Galaxies, are good but boring yet expensive. Huawei is as expensive, but they somehow find a way to excite the consumer base with, what I would call, useful gimmicks, like 6 cameras stuff. Oppo/Vivo (BBK and its subsidiaries) does the same, but more from the 'hide-the-front-camera' mechanics side.
It doesn't matter where the tech is coming from, Israel doesn't make their phones, what matters is here is to come up with a complete package that people would pay for it.
So it isn't really controversial to say the Chinese makes the best Android phone in the world today. It is just funny those those phones are nowhere to be found in US.
"Best" is subjective, r/Android might make you feel it's a big comunity, everyone should buy Android instead of Apple to avoid "being ripped-off" and not buying the best specs is stupid; but you should realize it's really just geek hobbists.
I used to be one of them, constantly tweaking it, ROMs, root and flash, compile my own ROM, compare specs and eager to know what's new, but that's long ago, I've quit being a slave to my phone, I've realized I just need my phone to work when it needs to(like average people?), and I spend no more than 20 minutes per day on it now and never waste time on the phone itself.
Average people don't know and won't understand specs, that's where brands like Oppo and Vivo thrive, they are good at marketing, hell if you go into deep China you will hear salesgirls peddling OPPO/VIVO as the best of the best in the world.
"r/Android might make you feel it's a big comunity"
Give you another example. I'm on the market for a new phone. I went to a local shop to get a feel of the latest offerings. While I was there, three groups of friends/couple/mother-and-son came to the shop and they all talked about Huawei. This is not in China btw.
"The tri-camera is Israel tech, they rely on Samsung for memory chip and OLED"
So what? Apple didn't make their own camera sensors. Apple didn't make their memory chips. Apple used Samsung's OLED too. And iPhones are great products.
Of course, you can argue Huawei's software is lagging behind Apple, but where is Samsung standing?
The high-end Xiaomis usually match the other flagship androids at half the price. My Mi5 S Plus has outlasted many of my friend's phones that were a lot more expensive. It cost just HK$3k (US$380).
"demise of Samsung phones in China is more "emotionally" driven"
Incorrect. Unable to compete and inadequate customer support are the reasons.
Samsung used to have a big user base in China. But product offerings from local manufactures became much better. Design, software and quality wise, they suit the customers' needs better. Samsung's products are simply - "meh".
In terms of customer support, Samsung treated Chinese customers like second class citizen. E.g. during the faulty emmc and fire-catching battery fiasco, they refused to offer the same level of customer service as they did in the US and Europe.
When the first/second case of exploding battery surfaced, Samsung accused the owner putting his phone in a microwave to cause the battery to explode.
Also Samsung adopts some dirty marketing tricks which is well known in China. They have been fined in Taiwan before.
>On the phone front, they were used to selling phones at premium pricing only relying on their brand name.
Welcome to the groovy train, you are about 5 years late to the party.
>On the chip front, TSMC has been outpacing them for years, and is getting all the contracts.
Actually TSMC more or less created the whole outsourcing fab business in the late 80's and has led the outsourcing business for the past 30 years. The fact that Samsung went from nothing in mid 2000's to #2 today is quite remarkable, even surpassing TSMC in 14nm and the first EUV rollout.
> The only thing I can think of that Samsung does better than anyone else is OLED, and others are catching up very quickly.
Samsung has been known for their displays for decades. On mobile OLED, Samsung had pretty much 95% market share for the past decade or so and I keep hearing about competitors in China and Taiwan that are in fact still 3-4 generation behind and busy sending spies to copy and steal SDS's IP, so I doubt it.
Comments here are out of their mind. Samsung's smartphone business hasn't been a profit center for quite some time. Majority of profit came from DRAM and NAND, and profit fall is directly attributable to recent price crash of both.
There is more background in other articles on Samsung's prediction:
>Samsung said it received fewer orders from cloud service providers, such as Amazon, as well as from handset makers, such as Apple, which has recently seen a slowdown of its own smartphone sales. This low demand in the cloud services and smartphone markets for both DRAM and NAND flash chips have pushed the prices of these chips down.
>According to Bloomberg, data centers are still going through their unused memory chips right now, Apple has cut its forecasts for iPhone sales and China’s economy, which is Samsung’s largest market for embedded components, has also slowed down this year.
>According to IHS Markit, a research firm, the market for DRAM is set to reach $77 billion in sales this year, which is a drop of 22% compared to last year. In this last quarter, DRAM prices fell over 30% (38% for server DRAM), which is the “sharpest decline since 2011," according to TrendForce.
I have never trusted this Datacentre narratives because it doesn't make sense. On one hand you have you Intel saying they can not supply enough CPU because of high demands, on the other hand Component manufacture are blaming the low Supply in the channel for their lower than expected sales. All while AMD is taking server and desktop side market shares, no matter how small the percentage that is.
I think it basically boils down to few things.
1. Surprise Drop of Smartphone Unit Sold, we saw the first YoY decline in total Smartphone Unit shipment. ( Unit, not revenue ). Out of a 1.3B Smartphone market, even a 5% drop is a huge volume to fill.
2. Better than expected yield of 3D NAND. Which means you actually have an increase in output. And it just happen all three, Samsung, SK Hynix and Micron were able to yield better at the same time. To be fair they have been very conservatives with their estimate.
3. More Chinese DRAM and NAND are being used in the Domestic market. Which is unofficially required for selling phones in China.
All these along with the improved efficiency of DRAM and NAND Fabs for trying to fill orders during 2017 and 2018 without building new Fabs. Meant the DRAM / NAND are hit with a perfect storm.
These are not at odds. You want your machines to be uniform. If Intel calls you saying they'll deliver only two out of the ten thousand Xeon 1234-5 units you ordered this quarter, you call Samsung and cancel 80% of the order there.
At least part of the DRAM issue is related to Intel's CPU supply issues being a drag on new PC sales.[1] But overall for DRAM and NAND, it's probably a case of market saturation in many sectors.
[1] As well as AMD has been doing with Ryzen, most large computer purchasers are still Intel buyers and are slow to change.
All the major SSD NAND flash producers finally hit volume production of 3D TLC NAND at roughly the same time last year which sent prices falling precipitously.
I'm not aware of a similar pattern in DRAM, which if anything has been suspiciously high for a while to the point that many assume price fixing was to blame as has happened in the past.
I think people attributed DRAM demand to cloud computing hyperscaling. Demand was higher than actual demand, because all of Amazon, Microsoft, Google purchased DRAM assuming their market share would increase. Predicted market share probably totaled well over 100%.
May be that was early 2016 or mid 2016? The price hike started in somewhere near the the last quarter of 2016. The current price are already back to 2016 average, we expect the price to keep falling as we have yet to see any price floor. At the current rate, with nothing in sight to turn things around, we should see the early 2016 prices this year, and expect to see historic new low in DRAM $/GB within the next 12-14 months.
Example: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07N124XDS a few months ago 32GB SODIMM was near unobtanium, a less known brand on eBay alone sold 'em for like 350-375 and now the Samsung ones are on Amazon at below 230 USD. Still has a 25-30% premium over smaller sticks but that's expected.
I just had a conversation with somebody who asserted that Apple was bad (proprietary etc) and Samsung was good, and that Apple was 3rd phone maker behind Samsung and Huawei.
He may be right about Apple being 3rd, but Apple looks to be the only one making a decent profit from their phones.
How do they manage that when they have to pay for both hardware and software development, when all the others get the software for free?
(for the rest of the features, that's indeed debatable)
Fun fact: Samsung made the chip for the first iPhone. Steve Jobs was so dissatisfied with the experience that Apple bought PA Semi to design the chips in-house.
The thing is, that CPU bit is not really relevant for the average consumer, anymore. Flagship phone CPUs have been good enough for web browsing and casual app use for about 2 years.
Not that I'm against extra horse power, we'll find a use for it. But we're in "desktop land", almost, for smartphone CPUs. They're good enough.
The real smartphone battles now are in camera quality, gaming oomph and battery usage.
CPU bit might be relevant for those who care about Privacy. Apple markets the fact that all processing (some ML/AI stuff) is done on device and not on the cloud, hence requiring good processing power.
But as you mentioned the battle is skewed towards Camera and Battery usage.
> Flagship phone CPUs have been good enough for web browsing and casual app use for about 2 years.
I think it's been longer. I'm on a non-flagship from last year, watching YouTube in PiP mode while writing this comment. Way more than necessary power for causing use.
Depends of course on your use case. I've been using my flagship phone for 7 years now. It has fulfilled all my needs without any problems, with one hand tied behind its back even.
That's less true for low end phones. People design software and websites for the average to slightly below average phone.
When you buy the highend they become average in a few years which is completely useable. However, low end phones quickly fall behind the curve and only keep dropping.
Now, that’s not to say the phone will physically last longer. Just that having headroom becomes more noticeable over time.
Still pretty much true. Sub 150$ Xiaomi phones from 2016 are still going strong (Redmi 3). And there are plenty of sub 150$ offerings with something like Snapdragon 636/710 and 4GB of RAM which will be more than enough for years to come unless you are into some hardcore smartphone gaming (oxymoron).
Not sure how my 4 year old Galaxy S6 still chugs along as fast as the day I got it. I'll purchase a new battery before getting a new phone (still on the original, which still makes it through the day on a charge). I'm pretty sure I could easily get another 4 years out of this. CPU and RAM are not an issue. I don't need or want AR or gimmicks that don't actually add value or productivity. Just a tool. My email and texts all still work fine as well as all of the business apps I need, websites I visit, etc. You don't need to upgrade every 2 years, or probably even every 4 years. People are more than welcome to spend the money if they wish, though. They've been trained well into thinking they do.
>Fun fact: Samsung made the chip for the first iPhone. Steve Jobs was so dissatisfied with the experience that Apple bought PA Semi to design the chips in-house.
I thought PA Semi's specialty was in power management and many didn't consider the acquisition a success as most key figures left the company not too long after the acquisition. Are you sure that Apple actually designed the SOC in-house? Wasn't it Intrinsity, Samsung's collaborator, that co-developed Samsung's Hummingbird core (also used in Apple's A4) to compete with Qualcomm's APs and go beyond the 1Ghz barrier, changed the game?
I always thought the Hummingbird was the breakthrough that made the A chips competitive -- Apple bought Intrinsity afterward.
> How do they manage that when they have to pay for both hardware and software development, when all the others get the software for free?
It's their ecosystem, all their hardwares work very well between each other. You have Apple messenger on a macbook connecting to your iphone. For android you need to download pushbullet. I'm not in the ecosystem I prefer Android but I can see why people such as consumer would continue to buy Apple stuff. I'm not entirely sure about their laptops though...
Also Apple make a lot of money from services such as itune and their app store. Itune made more than Spotify. It all works together with their close ecosystem.
It's a real pain to move from apple to android because text messages goes straight to apple server. You need to sign off and jump a hoop to get text message back to android. Also getting mp3 off of itunes or getting bandcamp mp3s on to itune. It's like LA fitness, at least in 2010, where if you want to cancel your gym membership you need to download the pdf from their website and then mail it to the provided address and then they'll charge you anyway one extra month.
You're saying Apple's making the money from the ecosystem, but that's not what the parent is asking. The parent is asking how Apple is making a money on each individual iPhone, which they absolutely are. Even if you never buy into the rest of the Apple ecosystem, merely purchasing an iPhone means Apple is making a profit from you.
Lots and lots, I might even say majority, of people who bought iPhones don't have Mac or any other Apple device but iPhones.
It's also only recently that the Apple ecosystem is relevant with Continuity stuffs. Before that, iPods, iPhones and iPads are all very isolated and don't require Apple ecosystem much.
On one hand, smartphones are more or less commodities now. Most established smartphone makers can make great phones (at this point I only compare cameras and even then, they also to all be great) so it is only natural that margins become pretty thin. But right now they are just too thin and the ecosystem is not really healthy.
We don't really need another Apple making huge margins on its smartphone business though.
I bet monoculture will come to an end when most devices get to run web sites good enough.
Even Google is now facing the issue that despite Project Treble, most OEMs don't care to release newer versions or provide the respective upgrades, thus rending useless whatever they show at IO.
"How do they manage that when they have to pay for both hardware and software development, when all the others get the software for free? "
Content and Apps. Apple takes a nice bite.
Samsung sells a commodity. Then people use the Google Play store and google makes money. I guess Samsung dreams of it's own phone OS. Was it LG or Samsung who bought WebOS?
Been using a Huawei 3i phone for more than a month now. I literally could not tell if this was Huawei or Samsung if I was given this phone without prior knowledge.
Although, there are rumors that Huawei are working on their own OS. And it would be interesting to see whether they would also introduce an OS for their laptop series.
I've been using a $169 Android One Xiaomi and the only difference I can tell between my original Pixel 1 is with the Camera and lack of USB-C. Xiaomi gets 3x the battery life. I have a Sony A6500 that I use for photos and just WiFi transfer them to the Xiaomi seamlessly. No reason for a really cutting edge phone anymore unless you use it primarily for gaming or absolutely need a top tier camera?
It's about Samsung Electronics. Samsung Electronics (roughly) has telecommunication division doing smartphone business and component division doing DRAM and NAND. Samsung Electro-Mechanics does semiconductor packaging, not semiconductor itself.
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[ 3.0 ms ] story [ 154 ms ] thread* I did change the battery twice though. Too bad it's not as easy as taking the back cover as on a Nexus One...
When I tried to get internet here in Spain a few years ago, I asked Vodafone how much it cost. 40 Euros per month (then add on tax). I asked how much it was for a bundle with internet a phone and a mobile contract. Same price.
I do see younger people with a lot of lat generation iPhones probably as handed downs from people on contracts.
As for stats, I could only get those from 2015, it was 50% across Europe, 77% worldwide.
https://www.globalrewardsolutions.com/wp-content/uploads/GRS...
Although I did find a couple that show Spain only has around 20% prepaid, which was quite surprising to me.
https://appleinsider.com/articles/18/04/17/apple-grabs-86-of...
I assumed Samsung’s android phones were the top of the range. Who do you think is the high end android phone brand
I feel like the vast majority of the Android ecosystem foot gunned itself pushing its way out of reasonably priced device segments. There really are no modern equivalents to the Moto G or Nexus 5 or even early One Plus phones in the $150-$350 range. Its garbage up through $200, then a giant gap to $1000 phones.
Especially in the tablet segment. I can get why Google didn't want to try to single-handedly prop up the form factor with first party devices, but the last good (and reasonably priced) Android tablets remain the second generation Nexus 7 and Nvidia Shield from half a decade ago.
Until there's another sub 300$ phone with an AMOLED upgrading seems pointless.
In India this phone costs $100. It comes with Android One.. monthly updates directly from Google.
I'm not sure why technical people still prefer iOS. Such a PITA when it comes to development and app store (register! password!) and transferring files.
My S5 was awful with multiple bugs, quickly dead samsung SSD, my grandfathers smart TV was slow despite being bought in 2018, and horror stories about Samsung appliances.
Also, your article on Apple's smartphone profit share is from April 2018, so more like 2017 than 2018. Not sure how relevant that is to 2019 earnings.
[1] https://www.wsj.com/articles/samsung-hopes-strong-chip-sales...
Also, remember that Samsung is still selling these components to Huawei, Oppo, etc., so it's not a total loss when they take market share.
not sure why that matters? the nascent non-memory component business is not the major cost-center, or money-maker for the company. Samsung's doesn't always use internal parts in their products -- take for instance, Sharp, which had been Samsung's LCD panel supplier until Foxconn took over. There are also rumors that some lower end Samsung smartphone use displays made by BOE.
Two independent industries. Those Chinese manufacturers still have to use memory products made by either Samsung, Hynix or Micron. It does not matter which smartphone OEMs make more profit or has greater marketshare. Those three DRAM makers combined account for 90% of global DRAM supplies. China is not going to have its own domestic (major) DRAM manufacturer anytime soon.
This is all part of business cycle that went a bit berserk in 2016 when Samsung decided to increase their capex significantly to boost their capacity to capture greater marketshare in spite of the obvious resulting glut. Yes, consumers benefitted from plummeting prices, but most DRAM makers had to cut capex and capacity to deal with the DRAM glut and plummeting prices in 2016. The lower capex and capacity likewise eventually led to the price hike of 2017-2018 that we just witnessed. During this rise, the DRAM market participants again started expanding and we are seeing prices falling again. Barring unseen major technical breakthrough or extraordinary market demand (no, I don't mean Apple's market share or profit margin, fanbois), this cycle would continue...
"Chinese competitors are basically giving up profits for growth"
It interesting how Apple have managed to capture so much of the profit in the industry, and consumers are willing to go with them rather than one of their essentially subsidised rivals.
I wonder how long this situation can continue for, some kind of reversion to the mean has to happen eventually.
On the phone front, they were used to selling phones at premium pricing only relying on their brand name. You don't have to look past Nokia or Blackberry to see how that will end. They're not really innovative, and while their devices are generally quality, they've pushed the price point too high. Xiaomi does 90 percent of it for 30 percent of the price. Huawei does 200 percent for about the same price.
On the chip front, TSMC has been outpacing them for years, and is getting all the contracts.
The only thing I can think of that Samsung does better than anyone else is OLED, and others are catching up very quickly.
I think Samsung will join the ranks of HTC and LG as also rans in short time...
They are more out-marketed than "out-tech-ed".
In the premium market, Huawei is lapping them. Samsung used to vie for best camera. Now they're with Apple in lagging far behind the Pixel and P series.
>In the premium market, Huawei is lapping them
Where? In China? My personal opinion is when you dive deep, Huawei is more about marketing hype than substance. The tri-camera is Israel tech, they rely on Samsung for memory chip and OLED, things like their battery life achieved by furiously killing background apps might spur outcry elsewhere.
I think this is also where Amazon is leading the future to：Those who market the best win.
If your goes to r/Android, Huawei is at least as popular as Samsung, and even more of a topic maker. And that has been the case for sometime now.
I have a Samsung S10E, but that is because I can't own a Huawei in US, for there is no customer support here.
TBH, S10 is the best phone Samsung has made in THREE years and I am quite happy with it. The past gens of Galaxies, are good but boring yet expensive. Huawei is as expensive, but they somehow find a way to excite the consumer base with, what I would call, useful gimmicks, like 6 cameras stuff. Oppo/Vivo (BBK and its subsidiaries) does the same, but more from the 'hide-the-front-camera' mechanics side.
It doesn't matter where the tech is coming from, Israel doesn't make their phones, what matters is here is to come up with a complete package that people would pay for it.
So it isn't really controversial to say the Chinese makes the best Android phone in the world today. It is just funny those those phones are nowhere to be found in US.
I used to be one of them, constantly tweaking it, ROMs, root and flash, compile my own ROM, compare specs and eager to know what's new, but that's long ago, I've quit being a slave to my phone, I've realized I just need my phone to work when it needs to(like average people?), and I spend no more than 20 minutes per day on it now and never waste time on the phone itself.
Average people don't know and won't understand specs, that's where brands like Oppo and Vivo thrive, they are good at marketing, hell if you go into deep China you will hear salesgirls peddling OPPO/VIVO as the best of the best in the world.
Give you another example. I'm on the market for a new phone. I went to a local shop to get a feel of the latest offerings. While I was there, three groups of friends/couple/mother-and-son came to the shop and they all talked about Huawei. This is not in China btw.
So what? Apple didn't make their own camera sensors. Apple didn't make their memory chips. Apple used Samsung's OLED too. And iPhones are great products.
Of course, you can argue Huawei's software is lagging behind Apple, but where is Samsung standing?
Incorrect. Unable to compete and inadequate customer support are the reasons.
Samsung used to have a big user base in China. But product offerings from local manufactures became much better. Design, software and quality wise, they suit the customers' needs better. Samsung's products are simply - "meh".
In terms of customer support, Samsung treated Chinese customers like second class citizen. E.g. during the faulty emmc and fire-catching battery fiasco, they refused to offer the same level of customer service as they did in the US and Europe.
When the first/second case of exploding battery surfaced, Samsung accused the owner putting his phone in a microwave to cause the battery to explode.
Also Samsung adopts some dirty marketing tricks which is well known in China. They have been fined in Taiwan before.
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2013/oct/24/samsung-f...
All the factors combined, caused their market share to plummet.
Welcome to the groovy train, you are about 5 years late to the party.
>On the chip front, TSMC has been outpacing them for years, and is getting all the contracts.
Actually TSMC more or less created the whole outsourcing fab business in the late 80's and has led the outsourcing business for the past 30 years. The fact that Samsung went from nothing in mid 2000's to #2 today is quite remarkable, even surpassing TSMC in 14nm and the first EUV rollout.
> The only thing I can think of that Samsung does better than anyone else is OLED, and others are catching up very quickly.
Samsung has been known for their displays for decades. On mobile OLED, Samsung had pretty much 95% market share for the past decade or so and I keep hearing about competitors in China and Taiwan that are in fact still 3-4 generation behind and busy sending spies to copy and steal SDS's IP, so I doubt it.
>Samsung said it received fewer orders from cloud service providers, such as Amazon, as well as from handset makers, such as Apple, which has recently seen a slowdown of its own smartphone sales. This low demand in the cloud services and smartphone markets for both DRAM and NAND flash chips have pushed the prices of these chips down.
>According to Bloomberg, data centers are still going through their unused memory chips right now, Apple has cut its forecasts for iPhone sales and China’s economy, which is Samsung’s largest market for embedded components, has also slowed down this year.
>According to IHS Markit, a research firm, the market for DRAM is set to reach $77 billion in sales this year, which is a drop of 22% compared to last year. In this last quarter, DRAM prices fell over 30% (38% for server DRAM), which is the “sharpest decline since 2011," according to TrendForce.
https://www.tomshardware.com/news/samsung-q1-2019-earnings-p...
I think it basically boils down to few things.
1. Surprise Drop of Smartphone Unit Sold, we saw the first YoY decline in total Smartphone Unit shipment. ( Unit, not revenue ). Out of a 1.3B Smartphone market, even a 5% drop is a huge volume to fill.
2. Better than expected yield of 3D NAND. Which means you actually have an increase in output. And it just happen all three, Samsung, SK Hynix and Micron were able to yield better at the same time. To be fair they have been very conservatives with their estimate.
3. More Chinese DRAM and NAND are being used in the Domestic market. Which is unofficially required for selling phones in China.
All these along with the improved efficiency of DRAM and NAND Fabs for trying to fill orders during 2017 and 2018 without building new Fabs. Meant the DRAM / NAND are hit with a perfect storm.
[1] As well as AMD has been doing with Ryzen, most large computer purchasers are still Intel buyers and are slow to change.
I'm not aware of a similar pattern in DRAM, which if anything has been suspiciously high for a while to the point that many assume price fixing was to blame as has happened in the past.
finally
25B (2016), 47B (2017), 54B (2018). 2019 Q1 profit is similar to 2016 Q1 profit. Things are simply going back to 2016 before DRAM/NAND price craze.
Who's 'we'? Are you speaking on behalf of someone. Your sig doesn't hint at anything.
Example: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07N124XDS a few months ago 32GB SODIMM was near unobtanium, a less known brand on eBay alone sold 'em for like 350-375 and now the Samsung ones are on Amazon at below 230 USD. Still has a 25-30% premium over smaller sticks but that's expected.
He may be right about Apple being 3rd, but Apple looks to be the only one making a decent profit from their phones.
How do they manage that when they have to pay for both hardware and software development, when all the others get the software for free?
People paid for it, even people who couldn’t afford it found a way to pay for an iPhone
The huge cash burst into Apple meant everyone was scrambling to deal with them.
Then economies of scale, negotiating leverage with third parties and sheer momentum propelled them
From a CPU perspective, they still are:
https://www.anandtech.com/show/13392/the-iphone-xs-xs-max-re...
(for the rest of the features, that's indeed debatable)
Fun fact: Samsung made the chip for the first iPhone. Steve Jobs was so dissatisfied with the experience that Apple bought PA Semi to design the chips in-house.
Not that I'm against extra horse power, we'll find a use for it. But we're in "desktop land", almost, for smartphone CPUs. They're good enough.
The real smartphone battles now are in camera quality, gaming oomph and battery usage.
I think it's been longer. I'm on a non-flagship from last year, watching YouTube in PiP mode while writing this comment. Way more than necessary power for causing use.
Probably also a case of modest needs, but still.
When you buy the highend they become average in a few years which is completely useable. However, low end phones quickly fall behind the curve and only keep dropping.
Now, that’s not to say the phone will physically last longer. Just that having headroom becomes more noticeable over time.
I thought PA Semi's specialty was in power management and many didn't consider the acquisition a success as most key figures left the company not too long after the acquisition. Are you sure that Apple actually designed the SOC in-house? Wasn't it Intrinsity, Samsung's collaborator, that co-developed Samsung's Hummingbird core (also used in Apple's A4) to compete with Qualcomm's APs and go beyond the 1Ghz barrier, changed the game?
I always thought the Hummingbird was the breakthrough that made the A chips competitive -- Apple bought Intrinsity afterward.
It's their ecosystem, all their hardwares work very well between each other. You have Apple messenger on a macbook connecting to your iphone. For android you need to download pushbullet. I'm not in the ecosystem I prefer Android but I can see why people such as consumer would continue to buy Apple stuff. I'm not entirely sure about their laptops though...
Also Apple make a lot of money from services such as itune and their app store. Itune made more than Spotify. It all works together with their close ecosystem.
It's a real pain to move from apple to android because text messages goes straight to apple server. You need to sign off and jump a hoop to get text message back to android. Also getting mp3 off of itunes or getting bandcamp mp3s on to itune. It's like LA fitness, at least in 2010, where if you want to cancel your gym membership you need to download the pdf from their website and then mail it to the provided address and then they'll charge you anyway one extra month.
It's also only recently that the Apple ecosystem is relevant with Continuity stuffs. Before that, iPods, iPhones and iPads are all very isolated and don't require Apple ecosystem much.
TIL people are still sending SMS from their PC...
I'd say most of us will either use the Signal client or web.whatsapp.com without bothering connecting the actual devices together.
On one hand, smartphones are more or less commodities now. Most established smartphone makers can make great phones (at this point I only compare cameras and even then, they also to all be great) so it is only natural that margins become pretty thin. But right now they are just too thin and the ecosystem is not really healthy.
We don't really need another Apple making huge margins on its smartphone business though.
I think I'd argue we need another two or three. Monocultures are almost never a good idea in the long term.
Even Google is now facing the issue that despite Project Treble, most OEMs don't care to release newer versions or provide the respective upgrades, thus rending useless whatever they show at IO.
Because it shows.
Content and Apps. Apple takes a nice bite.
Samsung sells a commodity. Then people use the Google Play store and google makes money. I guess Samsung dreams of it's own phone OS. Was it LG or Samsung who bought WebOS?
Although, there are rumors that Huawei are working on their own OS. And it would be interesting to see whether they would also introduce an OS for their laptop series.