Smartphone sales down 22 percent in Q2, the worst performance in a decade | Hacker News Reader

Smartphone sales down 22 percent in Q2, the worst performance in a decade

arstechnica.com

36 pointsvyrotek81 comments

My two adolescent children each own second-hand iPhones, which they rely on daily as their most priced possessions. It's intriguing to note their complete disinterest in newer models or upgrades. They regard their iPhones in a manner akin to my perspective on a dishwasher: indispensable, yet no desire for a change as long as they serve their purpose.

I upgraded from a Pixel 6 Pro to a Pixel 7 Pro (paid for by my employer) when my screen got cracked. As near as I can tell it's basically identical, but with the lock / volume buttons shifted slightly - so my old case doesn't fit properly, and my muscle memory is screwed up. Lots of things generally work slightly worse for no particular reason - it does a worse job of tracking my bike rides with Google Fit.

Your dishwasher comparison is quite apt to me - I bought a house last year with a dishwasher that had been badly neglected. I got it cleaned out and it's generally working reasonably, but the heated dry cycle doesn't work properly. I'd like to get a new one, but I'm skeptical that it will actually work better.

Hopefully this is the new normal.

Apple’s USB C has been a reason to upgrade before we strictly had to (deals available made a strong argument also).

I don’t foresee upgrading this before phone destruction.

> most priced possessions

as well as most prized...

While I agree with others that upgrading an older flagship phone isn't as compelling as it used to be, the report says that sales of premium smartphones were still growing:

>Canalys says, "Apple and Samsung boosted their premium segment shipments with 25% and 23% growth respectively in Q2 2023."

Instead, it's more about the sub flagship phones and especially less popular brands:

>The biggest loss on the chart is actually "others," down 43 percent, likely representing the further consolidation of the Android market. These are your OnePluses, your HMD/Nokias, and trashy pre-paid vendors like Blu. Canalys explains some of this by saying the low-end market "will continue to struggle as prepaid demand dwindles."

That may be due to inflation squeezing the low end market harder, Google eating their lunch with very attractive $350-$500 offerings, and growth in sales of used/refurbished flagships [1].

[1] https://www.theregister.com/2023/01/10/idc_secondhand_phones...

Like a lot of things these days, I find that newer phones are worse than older ones. They remove features I care about (replaceable batteries, headphone jack, memory card, MTP instead of USB mass storage) and add features that I do not want (such as a bigger screen).

The Galaxy S5 I bought almost 10 years ago was probably the best phone I had. If it supported 5G, I'd still be using it, because its replacement was much more expensive and much less useful.

It will only get worse, smartphones already do more than most people care about.

A large majority only switches their phones when they die, no longer charge, get stolen and such.

The move to "water proof" phones was in the nick of time.

If the gas station sold batteries for the most common phones the drop would have been way higher.

Yep, batteries are the only thing that is guaranteed to fail in any device, and the manufacturrs have made their replacement very hard and expensive in the last 10 years. Let's not forget, we had waterproof phones with a headphone jack, sd card slot and a user replacable battery already... and now they're trying to convinve us that this is impossible.

Well, sort of.

The old Nokia and similar phones were marketed as 'waterproof', but actually IP64/IP65 - e.g no immersion. They would be more correctly identified as 'water resistant'.

IP67/IP68 (the common 'waterproof' today) is much better, allowing immersion at set pressures for set times, however still limitations. This spec would be extremely difficult on the phone designs you've mentioned, if possible at all.

The Cat S42 H+ is one of the few phones I've come across that js actually 'waterproof'.

> Well, sort of.

The real question is, can I use any of the phones in the shower, or swim with them in my pocket? As far as I can tell, the new "waterproof" phones of today won't survive it either, and damage induced this way is not covered by warranty.

Point being, I don't think there's much difference in practice in terms of water resistance between old and new "waterproof" phones.

Additionally, AFAIK all those ratings are defined in terms of fresh water. The phone may survive being dropped in a sink, but won't necessarily survive being dropped into equivalent depth in sea water. Not knowing it almost cost me my Pebble Time a couple years back.

Technically they can survive a shower or swim until they've been dropped once. Which is to say, no they can't survive it.

I have swum many times with an IP68 phone in chlorinated water. I also have used my phone in the shower, pretty much daily for years. I don't have any cracks in my device, which I suspect would change this.

Yeah, there is a whole generation that believes on that lie, meanwhile Nokia and Motorola sold plenty of them back in the feature phone and Symbian days.

The EU or some other big government should just mandate that the first battery replacement must be free if it’s not user replaceable.

https://www.theverge.com/2023/6/24/23771064/european-union-b...

Apple is releasing a “only charge to 80%” feature with iOS 15.1 or whatever is next that will hopefully increase life.

Had that on some Android phones for a while now, e.g. my Galaxy S22 has it. I use it, and trust that it works - but this is not a solution, this is just adding insult to injury for those of us who remember phones with replaceable batteries...

To me it's less of a concern nowadays considering how batteries generally improved over the years.

I had my battery replaced along with the screen after my then 5yo device hit the pavement.

The health was at 83%, so not terrible after 5 years, but I figured I'd still do it because it was cheap.

Interestingly the new battery's health is at 91% - possibly because they stopped producing it a few years ago and some capacity was lost in storage.

Yeah I feel the battery passed “long enough” some time ago.

I used to upgrade my phone because the battery replacement would basically be a discount on buying a new one instead, now I buy a new one when my screen ends up shattered.

I replaced the battery of my Samsung A40. A video for your S22 is here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LrZx0DXoyEU

It's the same level of skill required to open a laptop to replace components.

Of course replacing an old style battery was 1000 times easier and everybody could do it.

My first iPhone was an iPhone 6. No iPhone since then has added any feature appealing enough for me to upgrade unwillingly.

Whenever it's time to put my old phone out to pasture because (and only because) it's at a point that it's too broken to use or be reliable: I let my wife get whatever the latest iPhone is and I take her old one which lasts me a few years easily.

I could tell that the salespeople at the Apple store were rolling their eyes at each other when I asked for a 13 mini a month ago. And I am sorry but I don't care about the latest, huge honking phones. Just gimme a smaller one where I can access my banking app and my train planning/ticket app and I am good to go! I am hoping that this holds up as well as my SE. If I can get 3 or 4 or even 5 years out of it, I will be happy enough.

None of the staff at the Apple store care what you’re buying. Hell, many of them probably personally prefer a smaller phone and virtually all of them at least understand that others do.

Praying for iPhone 16 mini but seems like a long shot, will just have to keep buying them up on Facebook Marketplace

I don’t want to give up my SE bc of the button.

The button is really nice but faceID worked better than I thought it would.

I recently upgraded from an SE to the 15 Pro. I think the two things I like are the upgraded cameras and the high refresh rate display. Definitely worth the upgrade but I’m paying for so many things I don’t need.

The main reason I am salivating after the 15 series is they finally got rid of the abominable mute switch. Other than that I am hunkering down to spend at least 5 more years with the 13 Pro Max.

The 15 Pro weighs double and the cameras make it huge, I couldn't make that change.

It doesn’t weigh double.

Latest iPhone SE is 144g vs 15 Pro 187g. And it’s surprisingly similar in size.

SE 138x67x7mm 15 146x70x8mm

I’ve used iPhones for quite awhile, from the minis to the 8 bigchungus and the 15pro and they are all the same size after a week or so.

My ideal would be iPhone mini sized. But I’m trying out the phablet lifestyle for now.

> A large majority only switches their phones when they die ...

I have a momentary double take, when I thought you meant that users only change phones when the users have died. Of course, in Chinese culture, that is done by burning offerings of paper smartphones while honouring the dead. :-)

Agree. I don't think there are enough young people to pay for latest and greatest phones and enough old people to care for latest technology.

Smartphones peaked a long time ago. At this point I actually want less features, not more. The trend is going to continue, as shown by the fact that years of support is now a competitive advantage.

I have a three year old low-end to midrange phone (Pixel 4A). If I got a new phone, it would do the same things a little faster and have a better camera. It would probably be bigger when I'd rather it be a little smaller, and it probably wouldn't have a headphone jack, which I use.

I'd be reluctant to take a new phone if it was free. I'm certainly not going to buy one until I have to.

Add two more points to the list:

1. It won't have a slot for a micro SD card, which is handy.

2. It will be much heavier and this is much more important than point 1.

They are doing their best not to part me from my money.

Why would it be much heavier?

I might be remembering wrong, but the Pixel 4 didn’t have an SD card slot.

I checked and found that the Pixel 4 is 162 grams. That's already too heavy for me. It's becoming common to have 200 grams phones. My current phone weighs 140 grams. I couldn't find any lighter Android phone.

The iPhone 15 is 171 grams for comparison. The pro max super duper is 220.

SE is 144.

A Pixel 7A is 35% heavier than a 4A. No Pixel has an SD slot that I know of.

They don’t have to choose a Pixel 7A, but fair enough.

I just used it because it's in the same model line, but here's a search on GSMArena for smartphones introduced this year within 10% of the 4A's weight. There are only two, and incidentally both have a headphone jack and SD slot.

https://www.gsmarena.com/results.php3?nYearMin=2023&nWeightM...

The zeitgeist is turning anti-phone. Most people are aware of all the harm their apps cause and their phone is a major conduit to FB, IG, YT, TikTok, X/Twitter and what-have-you. iPhones were neat 10 years ago but now, people are waking up to the fact that they don't want to spend the lives gazing into a magic rectangle.

This sounds very much like a voice from a bubble. Next time you're on public transport or in some other situation where people are waiting for a short to medium time, do a quick head count of how many aren't looking at their phone. More than 10% would be surprising.

Yeah, phones waste your life away!! Now back to scrolling on my laptop...

In a very small bubble maybe.

I don't install Twitter on my phone for obvious reasons and I am starting to experiment with charging my phone in another room over night, but not having a standard smartphone causes so many small to medium frictions in life that it is just not worth it. Plus I would miss out on a ton of photos.

> people are waking up to the fact that they don't want to spend the lives gazing into a magic rectangle

Are they? Just some days ago an article about a guy narrating his three-day weekend without a phone like it was the odyssey just hit the front page.

Doubtful. Seems more plausible that the bigger impact is less breakthrough changes year to year.

I still prefer the original iPhone SE. I just don’t think phones have needed to be upgraded for years now. Why would someone upgrade a smart phone? The cameras from 10 years were already good enough to scan barcodes.

I'm on the 2020 SE, which is basically the same, with a bit more RAM and a newer CPU. I upgraded because there was a good deal on a refurbished one. The big reason to upgrade though is simply the march of time. I can have objections and opinions about software bloat, but the reality of that is that I'm powerless to fight that movement. In order to be able to run modern websites and apps on my phone, never mind software on my laptop, the newer phone is simply more capable of keeping up. The fancy bells and whistles of the latest and greatest 15-series aren't necessary (though the usb-c port is compelling) but being able to run apps acceptably, is. There was actually a brief moment I was going to get a 13 mini because it's actually smaller than my SE but that moment passed.

Because we like to take pictures of things other than barcodes?

I swear I don't get people here who jump to conclusions so fast and just assumes that everybody is the same as them.

Yes, come to think of it there was no good photography before the iPhone SE came along...

There is the durability aspect, both physical exterior and battery life. I'd say these are the only reasons I upgrade phones. Two years of being carried in a pocket and dropped by kids tends to knacker these things out.

In fact, this leads to a pet peeve of mine: all these beautiful premium phones, made of titanium, sapphire glass and pixie dust... and the first thing you do with them is wrap them up in a plastic or rubber protector, and stick some transparent plastic on your crazy-high-res screen.

> all these beautiful premium phones, made of titanium, sapphire glass and pixie dust... and the first thing you do with them is wrap them up in a plastic or rubber protector, and stick some transparent plastic on your crazy-high-res screen

Right? It's both funny and somewhat annoying, that here you buy a beautiful phone with a screen extending to the edges, very little bezel to be found... only to reintroduce that bezel with a protector case. I sometimes pull my phone out of its protector case, to marvel at the experience of a nearly edge-less screen... only to quickly put it back, after realizing I'm holding a super-fragile metal-glass slate that keeps sliding out of my hand.

My pet peeve with phones and protector cases these days is heat management: I've noticed some weirdly inverted causal relationship here, in that the phone seems to be draining the battery much faster when it's hot, as opposed to heat being an indication of power draw. I often have to take the phone out of the case and put it on a cold surface, because it will rapidly drain the battery unless I cool it down. Given the phone has no active cooling (that I know of) this makes no sense, but it's empirically how last three Galaxy phones me and my wife owned behave. Protective cases tend to be good heat insulators, making them even more annoying.

I don't bother with cases and protectors. Sure, the corners are a bit scuffed and the screen has a few small scratches after hitting the concrete pavement a couple of times, but there are no cracks or dents after a year. I'll take it over the bulk and grime that the cases would provide.

Most people don’t need to upgrade regularly and there are not dramatic year to year changes anymore.

That said, as someone who enjoys tech and gadgets I’ll likely keep doing yearly upgrades and enjoying the subtle improvements they bring.

You may not care or notice but smartphone cameras have gotten much better at producing photos in less than ideal lighting consistently.

The cameras are where I still see subtle, but important to me, year over year improvements and I like taking photos and videos.

Good, keep showing OEMs that the consumer knows nothing’s significantly changed since 2007.

You think Steve Jobs would let something be this big and unwieldy, with this many cameras?

Given that people often choose the larger options when offered, maybe so.

People could buy the iPhone Mini, but they didn’t. Sales growth in premium phones doesn’t fit your opinion.

I know it sounds elitist and crazy, but I don’t think average consumers knows what they want in a phone

I think they see other people with bigger screens, and they fall into this trap that bigger display is less humiliating. That a bigger display is more important than something you can actually physically hold.

On the 1st gen iPhone, Jobs was very persistent in having a device that fits in your hand well. What happened when he died? They started making them bigger so they’d look competitive with HTC, Samsung, etc…

I can’t even reach the address bar in Safari with one hand unless I do a weird palm slide, that’s ridiculous.

The phone should be an extension of your arm, not a mini iPad.

Maybe you’re right. Maybe people just want different things than you.

Ultimately it doesn’t matter because given the option people didn’t chose phones like the iPhone Mini and so they’re no longer made.

Jobs was right about many many things, but not everything. I’m certainly glad the seemingly form over function era of Ive seems to have passed.

Also, the address bar has been at the bottom of the screen in Safari for two years now in addition to reachability which has been there since the 6 Plus to slide the screen down.

I buy a phone as big as I can still manage to fit in my pockets. I'd also appreciate it if it was twice as thick, if they would fill up the extra space with batteries and more ports.

200 more grams won't break me.

Without some amazing leap in capability like being able to run MacOS and replace a Laptop/PC, there just isn't a compelling reason to upgrade from my XS Max. For $1200 USD, I should be able to doc it, fire it up and have it do double duty as a desktop. They could possible sell a phone size doc (<$500) that contains some hardware to help the phone meet that requirement.

Not unlike PCs i think smart phones are largely good enough for most use cases these days. All the latest and greatest versions just seem to make the camera a little bit better. I have an iphone12 and no plans to upgrade until it breaks, my kids have even older iphones and as long as they can txt their friends, play games, and watch youtube they're satisfied.

The USB C port on the new iPhone and trade in value of my current phone about to plummet forced my hand. But besides that I can see why, phones are getting so fast that upgrading just doesn't make sense. We're no longer seeing leaps and bounds we saw in the beginning.

So what? Market is iper saturated, very few want to upgrade every year and the innovation is stagnating. Give us back smaller phones with less crap software inside and a bigger battery instead of cutting boards that don't fit normal pockets.

From my perspective, smartphones are good enough now that the only reasons I upgrade are when mine stops getting security updates, or if part of it breaks/wears out and isn't feasible to repair.

This devices has reached the grade of durability and sturdiness they have had since the beginning. Software and capacity does not really matter on the low sales issue.

Anecdotal but I’ve met more than a handful of people across age groups who’ve been switching to dumb phones over the past few years.

They all miss having a good camera and maps though.

some carries a camera. Or it is very easy to install organic map on a cheap smart phone with simcard in air plane mode the GPS will still work.

I like to upgrade my phones, and my wife's phone, as quickly as possible if I have a compelling reason. And, I am rather liberal about what I consider a compelling reason: better resolution, more battery life, better performance, some new sensor, etc. I have larger hands also, so a fatter phone in a larger form factor would be better for me too, because petite phones are a pain to handle.

The Milquetoast addition of a USB-C interface to to satisfy EU dictats does not a compelling reason provide.

The reports coming in of battery overheating are also the nail on the coffin.

I was upgrading yearly but after I got the 12 Pro I didn’t really feel a need to upgrade, until this year when my battery life started getting iffy for a full day use, the Face ID sensor stopped working, and I maxed out the storage.

Figured may as well upgrade to a 15 pro max and stick with it for 3 years. The new camera is nice; but not so much so that I’d upgrade only for it.

Perpetually removing features while making up for it by jacking up prices to laughable levels. Where is Surprised Pikachu when you need him.

I used to get a new phone every year but then companies kept jacking the prices up to where we are now. No way I’m supporting that.

canary in the coal mine for the economy?

I bought a mid-range phone with flashy lights on the back. I'm apparently desperate for something different or interesting.

I'm missing a lot of details, but doesn't classical economics say that if demand drops then the price should drop, too?

Does this mean we can expect (or are already seeing?) a drop in phone prices?

> I'm missing a lot of details, but doesn't classical economics say that if demand drops then the price should drop, too?

Price is the intersection of supply and demand. If demand drops price can be maintained by reducing supply. With economies of scale a drop in demand may actually translate to an increase in price as Apple has development and production costs to cover.

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