Global Smartphone Sales Declined 5.7% in Third Quarter of 2020 (gartner.com) 35
Worldwide smartphone sales to end-users totaled 366 million units in the third quarter of 2020, down 5.7% from the third quarter of 2019, according to Gartner. Overall global mobile phone sales to end users totaled 401 million units, a decline of 8.7% year-over-year. From the report: After two consecutive quarters of a decline of 20%, quarterly smartphone sales have started to show signs of recovery sequentially. However, smartphone sales continued to remain weaker compared to the same time period in in 2019, even with vendors introducing multiple 5G smartphones and governments relaxing shelter-in-place instructions in some geographies. "Consumers are limiting their discretionary spend even as some lockdown conditions have started to improve," said Anshul Gupta, senior research director at Gartner. "Global smartphone sales experienced moderate growth from the second quarter of 2020 to the third quarter. This was due to pent-up demand from previous quarters."
Economic uncertainties and continued fear of the next wave of the pandemic continue to put pressure on nonessential spending through the end of 2020. The delay in 5G network upgrades has also limited the opportunity for smartphone vendors. Among the top five smartphone manufacturers, Samsung held the No. 1 position with 22% market share. Xiaomi moved ahead of Apple into the No. 3 position for the first time ever with sales of 44.4 million units compared to Apple's sales of 40.5 million units in the third quarter of 2020.
Economic uncertainties and continued fear of the next wave of the pandemic continue to put pressure on nonessential spending through the end of 2020. The delay in 5G network upgrades has also limited the opportunity for smartphone vendors. Among the top five smartphone manufacturers, Samsung held the No. 1 position with 22% market share. Xiaomi moved ahead of Apple into the No. 3 position for the first time ever with sales of 44.4 million units compared to Apple's sales of 40.5 million units in the third quarter of 2020.
No surprise (Score:3)
Smartphones have had the same thing happen as happened to computers 10-15 years ago - for normal usage they are "good enough" and most people aren't sitting around waiting for the next model. I'm at the point where I buy a new phone if/when my old one breaks. My current one is a Samsung Galaxy S10e and I'm perfectly happy with it (and honestly, I was perfectly happy with my S7 before this but it randomly just stopped working one day).
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I think because of the pandemic, people are finding a lot fewer excuses to be mobile in general than they were. I suspect that if we really look at the numbers, we'll see this drop in smartphone sales correlates fairly directly with the uptick in desktop/laptop sales over the same time period.
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This (and the other article, Americans of all ages are spending more on video games).
Two no-duh articles in a row. Many of us are not GOING anywhere (or at least going out much less frequently). Phones aren't getting lost, dropped on concrete, etc. nearly as frequently. Battery life isn't an issue, as the charger is readily available. We don't need new capabilities if we're not leaving the house very often. Considering the last 9 months or so, a new video game will have a much bigger impact on my day-to-day
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People have learned that a new phone means a new UI - months of struggling
Bezels were actually useful
Headphone jacks can be used for a lot of other things than headphones - if you have one
Non-replaceable batteries end up setting land-fill sites on fire when water hits the lithium
There is no way to complain to phone manufacturers how appalling their current products are - and each generation is worse.
Locking boot loaders should be a criminal offence - we certainly don't want to be forced to
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I'm at the same point, except my phone is a Samsung A8 2018. So not even a top of the line phone from 2 years ago is completely fine. I also plan to keep my current one until it dies. After this, I'll search for something that can have the battery replaced easier and maybe something that is supported by LineageOS so that I can keep the phone for a decade.
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Is it because we are peaking good enough? (Score:2)
Last phone we got in the house was to have a stopgap phone for my wife to upgrade from her iPhone 5s. We got a 'used' iPhone 7 in excellent condition and in the end we have no incentive to upgrade, maybe to get wireless charging and contactless payments but that's not a strong enough incentive to fork a few hundred dollars again. From our experience our next upgrade might be an other secondhand phone. On the Android side some of my friends used to brag that they had to upgrade every 12-18 month and get new
5g ruined by data caps (Score:4, Interesting)
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Yea, this was one of my complaints too. You can stream enough 4k video data to blow through your bandwitdh cap in a matter of moments, but storage fast enough to save it all doesn't even exist.
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Streaming 4k on a phone is a questionable endeavour in the first place. Most people will find that at normal viewing distances, even 720p to 1080p difference is impossible to distinguish on a typical phone screen.
Re: 5g ruined by data caps (Score:2)
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That's youtube's awful compression at work. Beyond the "4k", it's actually better to watch 1440p on a native 1080p LCD screen than pixel perfect 1080p on 1080p screen. Which is absurd. But true because that's how bad youtube's compression is.
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We can, but we're probably hooked to hotel wi-fi at that point if we have quotas on mobile connection.
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Well, that's true but it only reinforces my point, because without capable enough storage, there's basically no other practical use case besides streaming 4k video for having that much bandwidth on a phone to begin with.
So, also:
Is it safer? No.
Does it use less energy? No.
Does it cause less harmful interference to existing spectrum allocations? No.
Is it more resilient against harmful interference from existing spectrum allocations? No.
So, why did we do this? (A: Because consumers are stupid and will bu
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There is actually. Using that 5g connection as your main source of internet for the household. Funny part: a few of the domestic ISPs here in Finland have been advertising 4g as just that for a while for remote areas where they REALLY don't want to pull fibreoptic/copper cable to.
Wanted to spend money (Score:3)
This year I gave my perfectly working iPhone 6 to my mum so I can finally support her and bought myself an iPhone 12 Pro, just because I wanted to spend money. For me this deal has only positives: the Pro is a very nice phone with a great camera, and I can support my mother because I know how iOS works. She used to have an Android phone and I had to tell het too many times to ask someone else because I don’t know anything about Android. For her the change was difficult in the beginning (she is 80 years old) but she understands most of what she wants to do with it now (mostly Whatsapp and calling people).
economic or the upgrade cycle changing? (Score:2)
Color me surprised (not) (Score:2)
Re: Color me surprised (not) (Score:2)
I'm waiting for Linux phones not to suck. (Score:2)
My S9+ is fine for many years otherwise (except for Samsung shovelware but they will never stop bundling that and at least I can run Linux via UserLAnd and DeX).
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A recent blog post [pine64.org] hinted Pine64 are ditching Allwinner for Rockchip RK3566. Mali G52 is a substantial upgrade on the incumbent GPU and the CPU is on a newer core. But before a phone appears, they'll release a SBC and let the community mainline all the hardware first.
Nothing dazzling but still, it may be sufficient for a low end daily-driver.
Re: I'm waiting for Linux phones not to suck. (Score:2)
Your S9+ is a Linux phone, mate.
You mean a GNU phone? Well, call me when hardware crimenufacturers stop locking down driver access to steal our money. They obviously got Linux drivers. It's a Linux kernel.
But other than that: There ae already many Linux user spaces and even UIs out there. One of them is Java-based and called AOSP. Sailfish is another.
And if you really want a FLOSS one: It's a process. It grows slowly. But healthily.
By the way: What jave you cotributed to getting a free OS lately? Code or mo
Peak Phone? (Score:2)
Must be ... I still haven't upgraded my Note8. What Note are we on now? 20? I'll keep my current phone until the battery is toast. Then I'll move to a Linux phone. They should have most of the bugs worked out by then.
Re: Peak Phone? (Score:2)
I'll keep it longer. Battery replacements are easy and cheap. Or display de-glueing.
Fuck planned obsolecense. It is a crime. It deserves prison.
Three causes at the same time (Score:3)
First, a lot of people who already have a smartphone see no reason to upgrade. Most comments so far seem to echo this. We've reached a "good enough, upgrading won't really change anything" plateau for people with recent enough smartphones.
Secondly that's what happens smartphones cost as much if not more than a freakin' mid-range laptop. Even some "low-cost", entry-level smartphones today are as expensive as the high-end models of the first generations of smartphones.
Thirdly, because of COVID-19 and shutdowns, a lot of people have less/no money for frivolities like buying a new smartphone.
Fourthly (not sure it's a real word, don't care) even if they still have disposable income, they may want to buy something else first. Both Microsoft and Sony released their new consoles, nVidia and AMD released new GPUs, AMD released new CPUs (Intel too, but at this point no gamer cares).
What Will Be Even More Devastating? (Score:5, Insightful)
laptops (Score:2)
And how much did laptop sales go up in the third quarter? How many people had to buy a device for school?
Maybe its just that people have spent money on other things during a pandemic and a shiny new phone isn't at the top of the list.
No need to (upgrad/replac)e it! (Score:2)
Unless it breaks, gets stolen, too slow, unsupported a lot, etc. like my former iPhone 4S (2011) that I finally retired last year after getting a free used 6+ (still good to me; 2015). Same for other electronics like my over decade old PCs, audio audio speakers, routers, etc.
It's the eeend! The eeend! (Score:2)
Watch the luddite-economists decry market saturation as an apocalypse again.
Because healthy stability and long-term survival is their biggest enemy.