Apple hits "all-time high" smartphone market share, takes #1 spot for 2023 | Hacker News Reader

Apple hits "all-time high" smartphone market share, takes #1 spot for 2023

arstechnica.com

41 pointsMBCook21 comments

Personally, I know a lot of people that were waiting specifically for USB-C. Not sure if that's the reason here but I wouldn't be surprised.

Apple may be selling a little more iPhone, ( we dont know since all the Data are not official and are guess only ). But the real reason is not because Apple is doing so much better but that Samsung / Android has significant drop in Shipment numbers.

I find it interesting that the top sellers are the most expensive models for Apple. Seems like this was not always the case.

Another point is looking at their source for the top sellers [1], the top four are: 14 pro max, 14 pro, 14, and 13. Next are 5 Samsung models, then the iphone 11 in tenth place. Notably, the iphone 14 Plus is not even in the top 10.

1: https://omdia.tech.informa.com/pr/2023/aug/omdia-iphone-14-p...

I suspect that the enthusiast buyers ate both buying more frequently and more expensive models. Meanwhile, the median customer is buying a base level model and holding until it becomes obsolete.

With the lighter weight of the Ti Pro Max, I went for the 15 Pro Max this year. The screen real estate was the main draw for me and my old eyes.

The other phones cos need to build up better reputations. It’s a slow process I think. No carrier mobile service manager. No bloatware especially hard to uninstall bloat like Facebook on Samsung devices. Better spam control - iMessage blue bubbles have low spam and good spam reporting. Easy subscription cancellations. AppleCare equivalent- saved me when traveling - went to an Apple Store and bam, new phone. History (not promises) of supporting devices for longer periods with os updates. Some of items on my list.

so maybe there actually is a market for sub 6" smartphones? I found it to be insane that there did not even exist an android one (except for outdoor ones) when I looked, when 6 years ago there still were options for sub 5" ones. That's quite insane and I can only imagine it has something to do with the cost of manufacturing (or margins, see SUVs as well?). Anyone want to chip in on this?

I think it’s lots of reasons.

I recently switched to iPhone because I couldn’t find an android I liked.

Galaxy has uninstallable Facebook apps (dealbreaker), Pixel camera was underwhelming.. and couldn’t find anything else I liked.

>Pixel camera was underwhelming

Are we looking at the same phone? Everyone I know loved the camera and I could've sworn it came out on top in that one phone camera elo ranking

They certainly hyped them, but I hate mine. The post processing is way over the top, for one thing. And the raw images are just terrible.

Yeah the market for Android phones seems to have devolved into nothing but cheap iPhone copies these days, with little if any, actual innovation in years (with maybe a few exceptions from Samsung). Pretty much the only specs they even try to compete on is camera quality.

I still stick with Pixel/Android since I prefer to have full ownership of my device from a development/hacker standpoint, but even that quality has been diminishing with each new version of Android. It's like every new release just makes the OS worse instead of better, so it's not something I look forward too anymore.

It really raises the question why am I even buying Android stuff in the first place? From a consumer perspective they are basically just inferior iPhones at this point and while I can technically do some advanced stuff with android, most of these abilities are locked behind adb now or simply outright disabled. I can't even freely change ROMs now since I'd lose the ability to remotely deposit checks.

From my perspective, it seems Android has nothing but a dark future ahead of it.

I see it the opposite way round

Apple would have to make the iPhone really awesome to convince me to pay more money for it. These days I don't see what that is.

For me, Samsung and pixel cameras, battery life, performance-feel, are plenty good enough. What's there to spend more on?

I don't even use Apple's messaging, photos, calendar, music etc. because I like having freedom to change between platforms and use them easily with anyone, regardless of their own platform.

> Pixel camera was underwhelming

I got 8 hours left in the day and I'm allocating all of my "wat" to this comment right here.

I'm not sure which Pixel you tried, but the Pixel series is known for having probably the best camera.

Keep in mind that a 6" phone today is very similar in size to a 4.7" phone from the past because the bezels have been removed.

The screen is too large to comfortably use. Bezel size is unimportant.

iPhone 14, 146.7 x 71.5 x 7.8 mm

iPhone 7 138.3 x 67.1 x 7.1 mm

iPhone Mini 131.5 x 64.2 x 7.7 mm

That is not what I would called similar. The iPhone 7. 4.7" sits between iPhone 14 and iPhone Mini.

I held out on my SE1 and SE2 until the 12 came out specifically to avoid a larger phone. While it seems there is a market for the size, it isn't big enough to care about (by Apple's own statistics).

>so maybe there actually is a market for sub 6" smartphones?

There is, but the problem is Android too fragmented and any sub 6" Smartphone from one brand does not make enough ROI. Brand loyalty is a real thing.

For Apple, it was selling well enough to be listed as Top 10 Smartphone in some countries but at the size of Apple, they thought it was not performing. They were used to be happy with 10M unit sold, not 10M unit dont cut it any more.

I bought a second Pixel 5 after breaking mine because I loved the screen size. The current model at the time went back to a bigger screen.

USB-C.

I don't mean this as any disparagement of the base claims - which are themselves somewhat a function of the fact that the majority Android market is fragmented into many, while the minority iOS market is One, as we all know - but the underlying network of corporate links here : that is, this story being a release by Blackstone's IDG Inc., who also ran the MacWorld magazines and trade shows, e.g. at which Steve Jobs famously debuted the first iPhone, and so on - along with some emotive media language in the story (e.g. "stunning numbers") - do arguably highlight how such releases also involve elements of selective framing which support the commercial motives and networks of the releasers.

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