Smartphone shipments: Apple down 30%, Samsung down 8%, Huawei up 50% | Hacker News Reader

Smartphone shipments: Apple down 30%, Samsung down 8%, Huawei up 50%

forbes.com

53 pointstraderjane89 comments

That's probably because smartphones are way too expensive.

Huawei and Xiaomi sold a lot of phones because their phone are good enough not to make people miss iphones and stuff yet cost only a fraction.

Personally, I got a brand new Xiaomi phone for 200 euros off Amazon with a 4-core cpu, 5.5 inches display, 64 gb storage and 4 gb ram. So far it served me good and has done everything I've needed.

I got an iPhone 6 from work for on-call availability, and it is actually superior in many ways, but despite this in no way I'm going to drop 800-1100 euros on a phone.

And Apple increased prices even further because they saw this coming (might as well be a self-fulfilling prophecy though).

I purchased a new iPhone 6 for under $200 cash about two years ago. You can get them a little cheaper now.

yes but what's the point ?

you get no warranty and the battery is already mostly consumed. my work's iphone 6 battery has already started underperforming after a few months, I guess it's not going to see the end of 2019.

I wouldn’t buy a 6, but you can buy A refurbished iPhone 6s from Amazon for $169 with a 90 day warranty and there is a battery indicator to tell you how good the battery is in settings.

The 6s is still getting updates and probably will for at least one more release if not to.

A battery replacement for your 6 - which may be over four years old at this point - is $79.

Why would the battery be consumed in a new phone in the box? Or why would Apple not give you a normal warranty?

I don’t have any issues with battery life and I’ve had this phone about 2 years now. The Battery Health in settings shows a max capacity of 87%.

I’m not concerned about a warranty on a $200 phone - at this point I could throw it out the window at a rock and get a new phone. That’s one reason I have a cheap older iPhone. I don’t worry about losing or damaging it.

My cousin bought a Xiaomi Pocophone for $250 and I was blown away by specs and smooth experience.

8 cores, 6GB ram, 64GB internal storage, 4000 mAh battery, good cameras and screen. The list goes on.

It's not hard to imagine this type of product eating higher end's breakfast.

Yes, it's the reason I bought the p20. I'm just not comfortable spending 1k on a phone. It's not just the total price but I just feel duped for being charged 100$-200$ more every generation for something that only improves very marginally.

I always felt that good technology makes things cheaper, faster, and gets out of your way. Increasingly high end smartphones don't feel like this at all.

> That's probably because smartphones are way too expensive.

I used to buy new phones every generation when they were $3-400.

And back then that money would land you a noticeably better phone, usually with some new capabilities.

These days “good” phones are $1000+ and each generation only gets you better specs.

Fuck that. I’m keeping my working phone. Peak smartphone was probably 3-5 years ago. Since then there’s been nothing really new.

I wouldn't say nothing new. It looks like a lot more are starting to add dual SIM to their phones (Apple can do it with eSIM, Samsung has been doing it since at least the S7)...But, I can also get a dual SIM Huawei for $400 less, that has roughly comparable specs for what I want.

> Personally, I got a brand new Xiaomi phone

Make sure to go over apps preinstalled (system apps) and disable them or take away their network permission, if nothing else.

NetGuard, NoRoot Firewall, Glasswire are some of the apps that let you do that.

Why? Because it's Chinese?

The amount of Sinophobia on here is ridiculous.

> Why?

Its good hygiene to rid of apps you have no use for. Note: Pre-installed apps on OHA devices include Google's, too: https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2018/07/googles-iron-grip-on...

> Because it's Chinese?

- Because its Android: https://techscience.org/a/2015103001/

- Because its Xiaomi: https://thehackernews.com/2014/08/xiaomi-phones-secretly-sen...

Huawei, OnePlus, Nokia have been caught spying on users, too. Lenovo, famously, MiTMd TLS on their laptops. So, really, its the OEMs. And also the SoC vendors and Carriers: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17081684 I digress.

> The amount of Sinophobia on here is ridiculous.

Not sure about that, but you might be onto something.

It's bizarre and misleading that the author didn't take the shifts in the Chinese market in the last year or two into account. The article starts out with a statement about smartphone sales being down in America across the board, but then slips into analyzing worldwide sales numbers per vendor, leading to the conclusion from the headline.

My understanding is that the majority of those shifts are from changing patterns of sales within China itself. Looking at changes in worldwide shipments without singling out how the market is changing amongst Chinese consumers is really weird given that people who follow this stuff closely have been talking about exactly that for a long time now.

If you treat the numbers within China separately from the numbers outside of China (which makes sense because completely different forces are driving those numbers inside and outside of China), then in the non-Chinese market, we would see similar patterns (Apple and Samsung down, Huawei up) but on a much smaller scale, and for different reasons. The author should've picked up on the influence of the Chinese market and focused on why it's been changing so dramatically of late. That would've been a far more insightful and interesting article. This is just a bunch of numbers graphed for maximum drama without context.

I start to believe what US has done to Huawei actually made the brand more famous. Smart phones are becoming commodities so marketing plays a big rule for sales. The tension between US government and Huawei certainly saved them tons of marketing money. Three years ago even many Chinese don't know Huawei, but look at what Huawei accomplished today. I travelled abroad frequently and people are talking Huawei everywhere even a street vendor I randomly met in nowhere Philippines, and they want to know more about my Huawei Porsche Design and discuss why Americans feels threatened by a company making electronic gadgets. No marketing money buys you that kind of popularity. In most places I traveled to, people don't believe the American version of the story, and when a superpower utilizes all its resources to try to destroy a company but couldn't do? There must be something the company did right.

Huawei is using the standard mobile phone playbook: They have a lot of carriers pushing their phones. They spend a lot on TV marketing. They opened flagship stores in big malls. They got celebrities such as Scarlett Johansson to promote their phones.

Not saying they don't spend big money in advertising. They certainly do, like any other premium brand. However their marketing campaigns alone are nothing extraordinary either. US governments accusation certainly helped - good advertising makes people intrigued, just look at the nationalist comments under Huawei related HN posts and try to read from a non-US POV. Not hard to come to a state that you wonder what the hack is truely going on and what really makes American feel so insecure. There must be something superior in the accused that triggered the action. This is happening as a trend, not just in Huaweis case, but in many topics related to China.

>However their marketing campaigns alone are nothing extraordinary either.

During last holidays almost every single commercial break in Polish TV had Huawei ad.

Thank for the info. Though not the case where I live (China) and where I often travelled (east Asia and ASEAN countries). However Huawei indeed put their best effort in marketing in Europe.

I'm am American and recently moved to Europe. I had to get a new phone because my old contract wasn't up. I had a LG G6 before, and ended up with a Huawei P20 and can't imagine why someone would pay 3-4x for a Samsung or an iPhone. The camera is phenomenal!

> can't imagine why someone would pay 3-4x for a Samsung or an iPhone.

Because an iPhone doesn't run Android. Android sucks. You couldn't pay me to own an Android phone.

Agreed. I don’t want to buy an iPhone. But I really don’t want to buy Google.

Now I’m looking for a dumb phone.

Products are generally cheaper when produced using stolen IP.

Apple has only 2 cameras btw. P20 has 4.

I'm not sure how this addresses the parent post's point

Implying for the most popular feature of the smartphone, there isn't anything for Huawei to copy from Apple. It has been very long time that iPhone doesn't have the best cameras along all, what is the point of copying that?

If that is the case why are apple and google not suing them to stop them from selling in US?

Huawei phones send info to China.

https://www.taiwannews.com.tw/en/news/3685669

And Android/iPhone in general send info to North America.

Vilification of the other without pause to consider the status-quo is not an appeal to "whataboutism" it's just pointing out hypocrisy. I really wish I didn't have to care about NSA or huge US tech companies aggregating information.

But I do. I cannot in good conscious condemn China for this if the alternatives are equivalent.

if the alternatives are equivalent.

Is the info used equally in China? E.g. does the US have a social score system?

Enough with the false equivalences.

I don’t understand how it’s false. Why do I care what score China gives me?

I could also argue that the US tech companies are fully capable (and likely doing) the same thing. Sure, it’s not government funded but remove the “US is good” lens and it’s quite scary.

It does what is the no fly list in the us exactly. Many people have got a low score of having a Muslim name or of being an aquantaince with suspected criminal to be put on the no fly list. Or having criticised some us agency all this get you a low score and stop you from flying. This system just doesn't have scores but it is the same damn thing.

Seems like rampant vote manipulation is going on here to promote anti-Sinoism.

More people already trust Google and are comfortable continuing to trust them (I don’t and I don’t think you should either, but it’s your choice) compared to an unknown entity with no data protection policies that we know of. Besides, there’s no denying that the Chinese government has used its access to digital information to track down dissidents, advocates, and journalists—not to mention racial profiling and persecution.

In fairness, there's rampant vote manipulation to promote everything on HN. So the Sino-philic camp is doing it too. kind of unfair to single out the Sino-phobic camp in that regard.

I mean, if you're in a room full of pregnant high school girls, it makes no sense to single one out as the "most" virgin. There are no virgins in the room.

Dude what are you talking about

Soon one of these brands will need to diversify the range in order to keep people buying these things.

The market for people wanting a big battery is not mainstream huge but is a tasty long tail.

The re-invented flip phone is going to be a win with the 50% of the population that have smaller pockets in their trousers than what the other 50% have.

Then there is the outdoor sports market, the phones that are waterproof and super tough.

If there is a diverse range of the same product in all of these form factors then people will buy them as their life changes.

One flagship can't be the perfect hand rectangle for everyone. There is going to have to be a more meaningful range, as happens with cars, laptops or even bicycles.

Although times are not as growth crazy as they once were there is no need for the market to become identical hand rectangles, there is still plenty of room for product innovation even if there are no killer features on the way.

I suspect Apple will be happy to keep taking 80%-90% of the profit in the marketplace while only shipping 20% of units.

I bought a Xiaomi Mi Mix 3 for about $600 earlier this year to replace my old iPhone and I'm quite happy with it. iPhone is sticking with that notch design that I really hate, and it made me started to explore other options. Mi Mix 3 and Honor Magic 2 has a sleek slider design that removed the need to put front facing camera directly on the screen. It's nice to have more options

To achieve the same as you, I replaced my iPhone X to 8 Plus and could not be happier.

I grew to hate the notch and the rounded display corners. Give me a rectangular screen and I'm content.

Apple shipments were down, but the IDC numbers reported here by Forbes are way off as noted by Xiaomi and other analysts:

https://iphone.appleinsider.com/articles/19/05/03/ihs-markit...

Ex Samsung Galaxy S8 owner here. Dropped it 4-5 times and the screen went off. I bought a Xiaomi Mi5, dropped it like 100 times and it still working without a problem except for the battery. It started to drain quickly after the 2th year of use which is normal and after all it costs 10 dollars for a brand new.

Forbes’ tech coverage is shameless clickbait, especially when it comes to Apple.

The amount of articles they pump out along the lines of “Apple’s new phone/os release/computer/service/whatever has a nasty secret.” is ridiculous.

Everyone keeps mentioning that iPhones get more expensive, but when you look at it (inflation adjusted), that’s not really true.[0] Apple is still charging about $700 (inflation adjusted) for a phone just as they did when it was first released. The only outliers are the SE, X, and Xs.

The only reason phones seemed cheaper is because AT&T would subsidize your brand new iPhone 3G so you only paid a few hundred, not the full price.

[0]: http://static.digg.com/images/a24b0086e42c464fabd1652cf01f8a...

> Everyone keeps mentioning that iPhones get more expensive, but when you look at it (inflation adjusted), that’s not really true.[

But your own source shows it's really true, and that the current cheaper, sub-flagship iPhone model (XR) is more expensive than the flagship models of previous generations up through the 5 and 5S, even adjusted for inflation, and that the only non-increases for the top-of-line flagship from one year to the next have been a few of the S models where the price dropped very slightly from the prior-year non-S equivalent.

True. But my point was that their phones don’t go up in price like people think. Yes, if you compare $499 for a bottom tier 4GB iPhone 2G to $1449 for a top of the line 512GB iPhone XS Max, they’re more expensive. But the cost for the base model has hovered around the $700 mark when adjusted (save for the few outliers such as the 2G, SE, X, and XS)

> But the cost for the base model

If you mean the model with the number but no other modifier except sometimes “S”, that's true up through the iPhone 8, but that “base model” isn't the same place in the lineup in different generations.

That model is the only (and thus flagship) model prior through the 5, but the bottom of the line for the 6 through 8 (well, middle of the road for the 7 generation, since that's when the SE came out as a bargain basement offering.) And for the X (same year as 8) and XS, it's just not even approximately true anymore.

But the thing is, not only is the 7/7 Plus ($475/$575) faster then most modern Android phones, even the discontinued 6s line is faster than all but the most expensive A droid phones as of last year - and they will still probably be supported longer then new Android phones.

Last summer I replaced an iPhone 6 or 6s with a 7 that cost about $500, or half the cost of the new, high-end phones. I don't perceive the new ones to offer 2x the value of a new or refurbished 7.

I got an iPhone X from work but wanted a personal phone as well and just bought an iPhone 7 because it felt ridiculous carrying around two brand new really expensive phones. My previous phone was a Samsung Galaxy S9 but I decided to ask for an iPhone when I changed jobs, to avoid Google.

I actually prefer the iPhone 7 to the X and even S9, I see very little reason to get anything newer.

I've got a Xiaomi phone for $220. Large bright IPS screen, gestures, 4-5 days on battery with all comms on (Nexus 6 did 1 day).

Only 2 drawbacks: not AMOLED (would add $100-$150, did not consider it worth), mediocre camera, which I rarely use anyway.

5 times cheaper than top end Samsung or apple offerings means they had to cut some corners. On the other hand if you buy xiaomi top end you get almost the same quality as the other brands and it's still half price.

Friday I had to waste precious pub time listening to my excited co-worker wax poetic about the camera on his new Huawei phone and it’s night vision capabilities. So this article was timely for me.

Apple has been raising prices even with diminishing demand.

In Europe iPhones are more than €1000, and besides a few people most don't see any value in newer models anymore and just stick to their current model for as long as possible.

When they buy a new one, most people choose a budget model because nowadays they work just as well (I guess Huawei's growth makes sense, then).

Personally, I also find all new iPhones extremely ugly. I have a Moto G5 and not only does it work great, it doesn't have a notch and I paid 1/5 what an iPhone costs.

It seems a strategy so obvious and obviously doomed to fail, but I have to assume Apple know what they're doing.

I think they're taking the same route on other product lines, the MBP particularly stands out for me - most don't seem want recent "innovations" used to justify runaway price increases.

I'm certainly watching this space with interest.

Is it that hard to admit that Apple products can no longer command a premium among its competitors? The company is now in a great trouble into irrelevancy because of years' inaction.

People have been spouting “Apple is going to fail” since their inception. People said the original iPhone was a fail for many reasons such as “no one wants a touchscreen” and more.[0] Until Apple fails, they’re not failing. They definitely changed directions under Tim Cook, but that’s because he’s not Steve Jobs. The Apple Watch has been a huge success with over 40% market share.[1]

[0]: https://mashable.com/2017/06/29/iphone-2g-original-naysayers...

[1]: https://www.macrumors.com/2019/05/02/apple-watch-1q19-market...

History doesn't always have predictive power over future, as no one would predict Apple would have an epic comeback under Jobs. And Apple Watch is no replacement for iPhone, which has been Apple's lifeline over the past 5 years.

Apple is in trouble because it doesn't have next iPhone, or iPhone4 to excite consumers. Adding incremental upgrade to iPhone while hiking up the price, is now a failed strategy and the market is punishing Apple for it. Only this time, they have nothing to offer.

Pivoting to service, where they aren't particularly competitive anyway, is like a pre-claimed surrender that they don't have the confidence to make their hardware business as profitable as it was.

I didn't see why people would be optimistic about Apple right now, except for the huge cash reserve they had because of iPhones. If they don't think out of box, they will be forgotten pretty soon, just like Nokia.

Pivoting to service, where they aren't particularly competitive anyway, is like a pre-claimed surrender that they don't have the confidence to make their hardware business as profitable as it was

Would you have said the same about Netflix moving from shipping DVDs to streaming or Amazon moving into the cloud vendor from retai?

There is no next big thing on the horizon that is going to have a market where almost 70% penetration like the mobile phone except maybe social media.

But if you look at Apple’s latest earnings, services is already growing like crazy.

Smartphone innovation stopped a few years ago and the general public is finally catching on. At the same time, there is little difference between cheap models and expensive ones. Taking both of these into account, Apple still increased their prices significantly counting on their brand as a fashion statement more than anything. It should be no surprise that sales are significantly down overall and especially for Apple. I expect this trend to continue and likely accelerate in the future.

I bought my son a cheap Moto G because they were always touted as being a good value. He was more than happy when I upgraded and he got my 6s that was two years older. There is a stark performance difference between a mid range current Android phone and iPhones that are two or three years older.

I wondered about the asterisks on the 'vivo' and 'OPPO' brands, and looked up the second name - turns out both (and OnePlus) are owned by the same company: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BBK_Electronics

So, going by the shown IDC numbers, that company has shipped over 46 million phones in 1Q19, getting about 15% market share and third place behind Samsung and Huawei.

Give me a smartphone I can install with what I want.

Installing what you want is generally pretty easy, it's uninstalling what you want the main issue. Phones are coming loaded with bloatware you can't uninstall.

I want my phone like a PC: I can choose the OS with no weird outdated binary blob requirements.

Some of the Android One phones still support bootloader unlocking. I was recently searching desperately for a recent-ish phone to replace my subtly-dead Note 3 and found that the Moto X4 Android One version supports bootloader unlocking (voiding its warranty unfortunately) and is supported by current releases of LineageOS (16).

It's pretty impossible to achieve even with a custom ROM unfortunately, even on LineageOS, you have a proprietary-files.txt for each model listing all the blobs you need to make your phone work.

Check out Dave2d's YouTube video about the same topic. Essentially it is argued that phones are going to become a commodity like printers. But he concludes that Apple is likely to escape that fate due to their ecosystem. Regardless time for change in the phone industry.

Unrelated, but I just wanted to say Dave2D is great. I'm normally not the biggest fan of Youtube product review channels; I think they're a little vapid. Dave seems objective and gives insightful, broader analysis and does a good job of putting products in context of what's available.

Link for reference: https://youtu.be/otHviixLykI

For some (a minority, undoubtedly), Apple's ecosystem is exactly what keeps them away. I don't want to be told what I can and can't do with my devices and have Apple pull the strings of vendor lock-in under the guise of security.

I genuinely wonder how it is that Forbes is so consistently an anti-Apple propaganda rag.

It's not subtle, is shockinly consistent, and I wonder how they can think their implausible bias serves their purpose as a "news" outlet.

I've never been a fan of Apple because of price. I liked the Google Nexus a lot, until the prices rose also.

Now on a S9 from work.

Fyi: I still prefer the bare Android experience and not the Samsung shell though

I like to buy last year's Nexus at a steep discount

So you’ve never been a fan of the iPhone for the price but the Samsung Galaxy S9 costs the same as an iPhone 8 ($600)....

From work, all information was supplied.

I didn't pick the phone

Huanwei is pretty expensive too.

Isn't it likely every Huawei is backdoored by the Chinese government?

Isn't it likely every phone sold in the US is backdoored by the US government?

I'm honestly not sure what to do about phones these days. It's getting to the point where I don't want one, but I essentially need one for work.

Isn’t that demonstrably untrue given terrorist attacks and shootings that go undetected even though evidence was later found on their phones?

Just because you're capturing a bunch of data doesn't mean you're parsing it/piping it correctly.

Just ask William Binney, et al, re: 911.

I think the US government probably does do this - I know Intel chips have IME, and it runs Minix, that Intel (and whoever Intel reports to) has access to it, and it has it's own IP stack.

But I have no idea about phones - what about ARM? Is there an equivalent?

So? Better a far away government w/ little ability to harm me reading my txt than my local government.

Not likely anymore. "Evil China" is getting way more leverage by being able to shrug and say: "sure, show us the evidence, oh, btw, `Snowden'" whenever the US try to play the trustworthiness card.

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