Smartphone sales down 22 percent in Q2, the worst performance in a decade::North American sales are bad for everyone, except, miraculously, Google.
It’s almost as if, they haven’t fundamentally updated smartphones in almost a decade, and now they want $2000 for them.
Also, it’s almost as if we’ve been in a recession for a year. Regardless of whether or not the government wants to call it a recession, we’ve had numerous back to back quarters with negative GDP growth. That’s literally a recession.
Well there are foldables, which are growing as category, but I don’t know if it makes a net difference and anyway they’re too small to make a difference currently.
"There are some of you who want phones that are easier to fit in a pocket, but we’ll break the deal we made with Satan if we ever build 4 inch phones again, so here’s a 6 inch phone that bends in half. The screen is so soft your stubble will ruin it and the Earth’s atmosphere is too coarse for the severely complicated hinge to survive a month. That’ll be $9900.
So divert the flow to africa maybe? where they do not have smart phones yet? Oh – they do not have electricity networks there, so maybe sell them with solar chargers.
I did upgrade my phone this year… to an iPhone 13, which I can pay a few dollars a month to AT&T for. And I only did that because my XR’s battery was dying. I would have been fine to keep it indefinitely. I see no good reason to upgrade and really, the only reason I had to was built-in obsolescence. A 5-year-old phone should not have a battery that goes to shit. Maybe 10 years old.
That’s not planned obsolescence. Making lithium batteries that survive thousands of charges is just really, really hard. Physics only allows them to last so long. Five years is pretty good for a phone. Frankly, I think making a rechargeable battery that lasts all day and lasts 10 years in a passively-cooled phone is just impossible with our current technology.
I mean, you could have just paid the $90 to have the battery replaced by Apple with an OEM battery and kept it for another 5 years…
Batteries are consumable items. They go bad. 5 years for a lithium battery that you cycle through at least once a day is good. That’s 1825 charge cycles.
I could have, or I could pay a couple of bucks a month for a new phone and not have to scrounge up $90.
So it wasn’t planned obsolescence then. You just wanted to upgrade rather than replace the battery and keep the phone you say had no reason to upgrade.
5 years would be fantastic. Mine last 2-3 at the most. People don’t realize how much they use their devices.
Some people Are very heavy users, and as such should expect a little higher maintenance costs.
I had my base iPhone 12 for 3 years and had 88% battery health before I gave it to my dad. I think that’s pretty good, and I used more than one full charge a day. He’ll have it at least another 2 years before needing a battery replacement.
I’ll have my 15 pro for probably 5 years before giving it off to him, though I expect to replace the battery once.
Everyone is currently poor as shit.
*poor people are poor as shit
rich people who are richer off the backs of poor people are not poor as shit*
Sure, but even rich people don’t buy more than two phones, if they have one for personal and one for business.
Or, maybe, people realized that there is no reason to get a new phone every year.
True, but the calculation probably include also less expensive models, which make probably the big part of the market.
And even for a low price smartphone there is no necessity to buy a new one every year.
Then I agree, actually probably there is way less people that can put 1000 or more $/€ on a phone every year.
I have plenty of disposable income. But why would I spend hundreds and hundreds on a new phone when I just got a Pixel 5 off eBay for $100?
Pixel 5 was peak pixel… I have a 7a now but TBH preferred the 5 just for its size and rear fingerprint reader.
On the iphone side I picked up an iphone SE 2020 for £120 (no an ios fan but it’s good to have around for development and testing).
There’s really not justification for £800 phones any more when the older ones are this good…
“The average sell price is up from $663 to $738 year over year, indicating it’s the premium phones that are selling, and all the cheap vendors are getting shut out.”
Totally disagree with the article’s assumption, I’d say you are more correct. No one wants to or has that much money to pay for ridiculous prices, so sales are tanking. The few who can, or must buy a new phone certainly aren’t going to buy something with no staying power when hundreds of phone makers have coke and gone in the last decade.
you fuck around, you find out
Huh?
It’s more so the state of the world. Everything is unbelievably expensive. I’d rather pay my grocery bill and rent than get a new phone.
