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Comment by xony | Hacker News Reader

why ? recession coming?

Android sales are down across the board because we're (consumers) already in a recession, so spending is down.

Additionally, most people on Android world use pre-paid and only replace the phones when they break down, get lost, stolen,....

Besides that, phones have plateaued in meaningful features for average consumers, they are good enough for their job.

Phones have plateaued for a long time but only now we're seeing this massive dip so peoples' lower purchasing power is to blame.

Also flagship level phones have gotten much more expensive to bot to further put gas on the fire. In 2020 I got my OnePlus 7T for around 440 Euros, not the absolute pinnacle for the time, but close, now an equivalent model is something like 600-700 Euros. Yeah, we had inflation since then but Gawd damn that's steep!

First line in TFA: >Smartphone sales are down across the board, and that means component vendors like Qualcomm are also feeling the heat.

Qualcomm is one of those companies that employs five lawyers for every engineer. That works great, right up until the patents expire.

i doubt it, can you share the source of the data?

Have to assume a lot of it is Apple making its own chips? And the rise of NVIDIA?

Apple never bought Qualcomm’s CPUs, and I don’t think they ever competed with NVidia. I think it’s just smartphone vendors are seeing a decline in sales; leading to a decline for Qualcomm.

10 years ago each upgrade is leaps and bounds faster. And it's required too as the apps would be more demanding by the year.

Nowadays everything is stale. There are no killer apps to drive upgrade. A 2020 flagship is still in top condition to handle any apps except 3d games.

Maybe we created enough good-enough phones for every human being and it's just that?

Ie. not recession.

It seems they are not progressing. They have the same features as before, perhaps dramatically improved, nothing worth upgrading. Compared to the early days things are quite unimaginative. With the size of these companies it cant be easy to reinvent themselves.

> perhaps dramatically improved

The only thing which has "dramatically improved" is the reshufling of GUI elements and the passive agressive warnings covering half of the screen which you cannot dismiss.

Rampant inflation, mass layoffs, record homelessness, ever increasing credit card debt among the middle class. Most Americans are unprepared for a $400 emergency expense. This is fine, the economy is doing great. Ignore what you’re seeing and believe what the party tells you.

I'm not interested in politics and I don't live in US.

It is the same in EU.

Yeah but those memes existed in the 80s. Did the world end?

Both parties say capitalism is great and inflation exists?

By your logic, those things don’t exist so where’s the problem?

Have you ever considered you’re a paranoid hallucinating the importance and existence of such things?

Yes, but every consumer that switches from Android to iPhone is a lost sale for Qualcomm.

Apple is switching from Qualcomm Modems to in-house designs for 20204.

qualcomm's major source of revenue is from china. China makes up more than 40% of its sales and china consumer market has weakened.

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