Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

China smartphone market suffers hard-landing, shipments decline 21% in Q1 2018

canalys.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

91–100 of 187 posts

Re: China smartphone market suffers hard-landing, shipments decline 21% in Q1 2018

#91

Post by tboughen »

ZeroGravitas wrote: post #43
GFischer wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have a Xiaomi phone. It costs less than 200 dollars after taxes in my country, and it's great. My cell phone company basically gives them for free in exchange for the 2 year contract, so after my 2 years are up, I'm definitely switching it for a newer model, or I'm leaving money on the table. Many people are way more careless than I am, or heavier users, and definitely switch every year (or even less!). Chinese pho…

They don't give them away free, they build the cost into your contract. If there's sufficient competition in your local market you'll be able to buy a sim-only deal that costs less and returns that money to you and let's you upgrade on your own schedule to a phone of your own choosing.

I thought that too. However last Black Friday I found the best deal on an iPhone X was to pay £450 up front and then pay £29 per month for 2 years (totalling £1147 or £6.13 per month above the phone’s list price). The data and minutes I get would cost me at least £15 per month, making my deal absurdly good value!

Re: China smartphone market suffers hard-landing, shipments decline 21% in Q1 2018

#92

Post by joncrane »

akhilcacharya wrote: post #64
bruceb wrote: post #15

Almost any $200+ phone made since 2015 has a pretty good camera, screen, speed for most people. Why upgrade when what you have is good enough? One used to check out gizmodo/engadget when a new phone came out but seems not anymore as "the new" is only incremental.

I’m due for an upgrade but I’m refusing on account of new flagships not having 3.5 headphone jack.

Did the Pixel 2 get rid of the headphone jack?

Re: China smartphone market suffers hard-landing, shipments decline 21% in Q1 2018

#93

Post by 1123581321 »

reaperducer wrote: post #42
cs702 wrote: post #16

Wow, a 21% year-over-year drop... and this makes the fourth consecutive quarter of annual declines (in the previous three quarters, shipments had dropped -3%, -5%, and -14% year-over-year). A hard landing indeed. The implications for phone makers are unpleasant: price competition is going to intensify and profit margins, which are already thin, will get squeezed even more and might even turn negative. (Only Apple, wh…

>Only Apple, which makes exclusively high-end devices for style-conscious, less-price-sensitive consumers, This is a very tired cliche, and untrue to anyone who's ever seen any of the hundreds of ads where new iPhones are available for $0 from most carriers.

This is about China, but even in the US a free iPhone is not a common carrier incentive. You can see a summary of deals here.* Promotions apparently range from $200-500 in value. Android phones and tablets are the ones routinely given away for free (e.g. T-Mobile currently offers a free Android tablet just for switching an existing prepaid account to post-paid), though again, not for the premium brands like Pixel.

It may be tiresome to hear that iPhones cost more and are popular at the same time, but it’s still true.

* https://www.tomsguide.com/us/iphone-x-iphone-8-best-deals,ne...

Re: China smartphone market suffers hard-landing, shipments decline 21% in Q1 2018

#94

Post by jordache »

supertrope wrote: post #75
jdietrich wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Chinese market is different. Chinese carriers offer minimal subsidies, so most customers are paying close to full retail for their phones and aren't tightly coupled to a two-year upgrade cycle. Used phones are a popular choice for value-oriented customers. Repair is the norm rather than the exception, so most customers will replace a cracked screen or a weak battery rather than just disposing of their phone. Labo…

IMO WeChat is bloated. While the app itself only uses n MB, it stores all chat history and embedded multimedia on the device itself. Eventually each group chat will hog >1GB. I uninstalled after they made the app refuse to run without constant GPS permission.

anecdotal feedback though.. your objection to them needing gps permission doesn't stack up at all against the robust platform wechat has become, which hundreds of millions depend on for everyday transactions.

So the OP's point of people in China mainly needing WeChat is 100% relevant. While your side comment about what a single user doesn't like about wechat is 100% irrelevant.

Re: China smartphone market suffers hard-landing, shipments decline 21% in Q1 2018

#95

Post by seanmcdirmid »

supertrope wrote: post #79
hugh4life wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hopefully a plateauing of the smartphone market along with China starting to produce memory will start to bring memory prices down. And then manufacturers will consider adding 8-16GB of memory... and at that point I wonder if more people will just use their phone docked to a monitor as their PC if Apple/Google/Microsoft do a better job facilitating it.

I doubt they will inflate BOM by $100. Excessive RAM also hurts battery life.

RAM and flash are different things. More of the latter won’t hurt battery life very much.

Re: China smartphone market suffers hard-landing, shipments decline 21% in Q1 2018

#96

Post by seanmcdirmid »

ProAm wrote: post #54
chrisper wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's at least 200 CHF difference here.

Ahh yeah makes sense. I wish it was closer to being the OnePlus5T range of being $500-600USD vs what its priced at. Then it's a no brainer to purchase but now being so expensive and untested on US LTE bands its too risky (and our government says not to by Huawei for national security reasons).

I don’t think the government says not to buy huawei phones. They are more worried about routers and back end telecommunication equipment, which is their main market.

Re: China smartphone market suffers hard-landing, shipments decline 21% in Q1 2018

#97

Post by GFischer »

ZeroGravitas wrote: post #43
GFischer wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have a Xiaomi phone. It costs less than 200 dollars after taxes in my country, and it's great. My cell phone company basically gives them for free in exchange for the 2 year contract, so after my 2 years are up, I'm definitely switching it for a newer model, or I'm leaving money on the table. Many people are way more careless than I am, or heavier users, and definitely switch every year (or even less!). Chinese pho…

They don't give them away free, they build the cost into your contract. If there's sufficient competition in your local market you'll be able to buy a sim-only deal that costs less and returns that money to you and let's you upgrade on your own schedule to a phone of your own choosing.

It's the local state company. So no "sufficient competition" there (there are 2 other companies, but neither gives significant advantages, and you can't keep your phone number, which is a huge disadvantage).

Even if I went to China and bought the phone there I'd still be behind, no way to get a data-only contract for less than phone+data.

I'm not happy about it, it's just the way things are, and the reason I'll be switching phones next year (just because I'm basically forced to by the carrier).

Re: China smartphone market suffers hard-landing, shipments decline 21% in Q1 2018

#98

Post by bitmapbrother »

reaperducer wrote: post #39
grizzles wrote: post #34

This is a good thing if you want a truly open source phone. Smartphones have become a commodity. Yet the solidarity among fabricators against a { us: hardware, you: software } business model has been remarkable. Margins have been razor thin for awhile, the business is incredibly cutthroat. Though it might come from Taiwan, I hope this is the straw that breaks the camels back. BTW I'm talking on the low end here. It's…

"Razor thin" may be something of an exaggeration. Apple's margin on iPhones is 59-64%[1]. Samsung is 17%[0]. "Razor thin" would be the grocery industry, which is usually under 3%. [0]: http://fortune.com/2016/08/23/apple-samsung-smartphone-profi... [1]: https://www.reuters.com/article/us-apple-iphone/apples-iphon...

Your second link is broken. Your first link, from 2016, indicates that Apple made a 38% margin.

>Apple's margin on iPhones is 59-64%. Samsung is 17%

Apple does not make 59-64% margin on their phones. This highly inaccurate figure was likely extrapolated by taking the retail price of the phone and subtracting the cost of its parts. The real profit margin which is likely around 30-40%. As for Samsung, their flag ship phones also generate a profit margin that is similar to that of Apple's.

Re: China smartphone market suffers hard-landing, shipments decline 21% in Q1 2018

#99

Post by kccqzy »

supertrope wrote: post #75
jdietrich wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Chinese market is different. Chinese carriers offer minimal subsidies, so most customers are paying close to full retail for their phones and aren't tightly coupled to a two-year upgrade cycle. Used phones are a popular choice for value-oriented customers. Repair is the norm rather than the exception, so most customers will replace a cracked screen or a weak battery rather than just disposing of their phone. Labo…

IMO WeChat is bloated. While the app itself only uses n MB, it stores all chat history and embedded multimedia on the device itself. Eventually each group chat will hog >1GB. I uninstalled after they made the app refuse to run without constant GPS permission.

I'd rather prefer a chat app that stores all chat history and media on my device instead of some cloud.

On my iPhone WeChat starts fine without having the location services permission.

Re: China smartphone market suffers hard-landing, shipments decline 21% in Q1 2018

#100

Post by ajross »

Johnie wrote: post #90

See: * Bass Diffusion Model: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bass_diffusion_model * Diffusion of Innovation Model: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diffusion_of_innovations These models have been fairly accurate in forecasting diffusion of innovation. While many of the innovators have started to exit and move on, this leaves the imitators around in a slowing market. Apple has been surprisingly good at being the forefront…

> Apple has already moved onto the next technological innovation: Apple Watch and wearables.

Seriously? Are there any number at all to show that wearables are a growth bet at this point? The Apple Watch (which entered the market three years ago!) has had an uptake at least an order of magnitude lower than the iPad, the last "next technological innovation" that turned out not to be. Tablets were hot for a while, but at the end of the day the smartphone market remains an order of magnitude bigger. The watch has never remotely been that hot.

Basically: innovation is hard. Wearables are not looking like the next big thing at this stage, and they are surely not going to save Apple from the expected downturn in smartphone sales.

Post reply on HN