Smartphone shipments: Apple down 30%, Samsung down 8%, Huawei up 50% • Hacker News Board

Re: Smartphone shipments: Apple down 30%, Samsung down 8%, Huawei up 50%

#21

Post by realusername » Sat, May 04, 2019, 6:44 PM UTC

noja wrote: post #17

realusername wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Installing what you want is generally pretty easy, it's uninstalling what you want the main issue. Phones are coming loaded with bloatware you can't uninstall.

I want my phone like a PC: I can choose the OS with no weird outdated binary blob requirements.

It's pretty impossible to achieve even with a custom ROM unfortunately, even on LineageOS, you have a proprietary-files.txt for each model listing all the blobs you need to make your phone work.

Re: Smartphone shipments: Apple down 30%, Samsung down 8%, Huawei up 50%

#22

Post by thetechlead » Sat, May 04, 2019, 6:45 PM UTC

I start to believe what US has done to Huawei actually made the brand more famous. Smart phones are becoming commodities so marketing plays a big rule for sales. The tension between US government and Huawei certainly saved them tons of marketing money. Three years ago even many Chinese don't know Huawei, but look at what Huawei accomplished today. I travelled abroad frequently and people are talking Huawei everywhere even a street vendor I randomly met in nowhere Philippines, and they want to know more about my Huawei Porsche Design and discuss why Americans feels threatened by a company making electronic gadgets. No marketing money buys you that kind of popularity. In most places I traveled to, people don't believe the American version of the story, and when a superpower utilizes all its resources to try to destroy a company but couldn't do? There must be something the company did right.

Re: Smartphone shipments: Apple down 30%, Samsung down 8%, Huawei up 50%

#23

Post by noirknight » Sat, May 04, 2019, 6:46 PM UTC

Friday I had to waste precious pub time listening to my excited co-worker wax poetic about the camera on his new Huawei phone and it’s night vision capabilities. So this article was timely for me.

Re: Smartphone shipments: Apple down 30%, Samsung down 8%, Huawei up 50%

#24

Post by cm2012 » Sat, May 04, 2019, 6:47 PM UTC

Isn't it likely every Huawei is backdoored by the Chinese government?

Re: Smartphone shipments: Apple down 30%, Samsung down 8%, Huawei up 50%

#25

Post by hu3 » Sat, May 04, 2019, 6:48 PM UTC

znpy wrote: post #4

That's probably because smartphones are way too expensive. Huawei and Xiaomi sold a lot of phones because their phone are good enough not to make people miss iphones and stuff yet cost only a fraction. Personally, I got a brand new Xiaomi phone for 200 euros off Amazon with a 4-core cpu, 5.5 inches display, 64 gb storage and 4 gb ram. So far it served me good and has done everything I've needed. I got an iPhone 6 fro…

My cousin bought a Xiaomi Pocophone for $250 and I was blown away by specs and smooth experience.

8 cores, 6GB ram, 64GB internal storage, 4000 mAh battery, good cameras and screen. The list goes on.

It's not hard to imagine this type of product eating higher end's breakfast.

Re: Smartphone shipments: Apple down 30%, Samsung down 8%, Huawei up 50%

#26

Post by mwfunk » Sat, May 04, 2019, 6:49 PM UTC

It's bizarre and misleading that the author didn't take the shifts in the Chinese market in the last year or two into account. The article starts out with a statement about smartphone sales being down in America across the board, but then slips into analyzing worldwide sales numbers per vendor, leading to the conclusion from the headline.

My understanding is that the majority of those shifts are from changing patterns of sales within China itself. Looking at changes in worldwide shipments without singling out how the market is changing amongst Chinese consumers is really weird given that people who follow this stuff closely have been talking about exactly that for a long time now.

If you treat the numbers within China separately from the numbers outside of China (which makes sense because completely different forces are driving those numbers inside and outside of China), then in the non-Chinese market, we would see similar patterns (Apple and Samsung down, Huawei up) but on a much smaller scale, and for different reasons. The author should've picked up on the influence of the Chinese market and focused on why it's been changing so dramatically of late. That would've been a far more insightful and interesting article. This is just a bunch of numbers graphed for maximum drama without context.

Re: Smartphone shipments: Apple down 30%, Samsung down 8%, Huawei up 50%

#27

Post by votepaunchy » Sat, May 04, 2019, 6:51 PM UTC

Apple shipments were down, but the IDC numbers reported here by Forbes are way off as noted by Xiaomi and other analysts:

https://iphone.appleinsider.com/articles/19/05/03/ihs-markit...

Re: Smartphone shipments: Apple down 30%, Samsung down 8%, Huawei up 50%

#28

Post by jjtheblunt » Sat, May 04, 2019, 6:52 PM UTC

I genuinely wonder how it is that Forbes is so consistently an anti-Apple propaganda rag.

It's not subtle, is shockinly consistent, and I wonder how they can think their implausible bias serves their purpose as a "news" outlet.

Re: Smartphone shipments: Apple down 30%, Samsung down 8%, Huawei up 50%

#29

Post by paavoova » Sat, May 04, 2019, 6:54 PM UTC

nafey wrote: post #2

Check out Dave2d's YouTube video about the same topic. Essentially it is argued that phones are going to become a commodity like printers. But he concludes that Apple is likely to escape that fate due to their ecosystem. Regardless time for change in the phone industry.

For some (a minority, undoubtedly), Apple's ecosystem is exactly what keeps them away. I don't want to be told what I can and can't do with my devices and have Apple pull the strings of vendor lock-in under the guise of security.

Re: Smartphone shipments: Apple down 30%, Samsung down 8%, Huawei up 50%

#30

Post by Barrin92 » Sat, May 04, 2019, 6:56 PM UTC

znpy wrote: post #4

That's probably because smartphones are way too expensive. Huawei and Xiaomi sold a lot of phones because their phone are good enough not to make people miss iphones and stuff yet cost only a fraction. Personally, I got a brand new Xiaomi phone for 200 euros off Amazon with a 4-core cpu, 5.5 inches display, 64 gb storage and 4 gb ram. So far it served me good and has done everything I've needed. I got an iPhone 6 fro…

Yes, it's the reason I bought the p20. I'm just not comfortable spending 1k on a phone. It's not just the total price but I just feel duped for being charged 100$-200$ more every generation for something that only improves very marginally.

I always felt that good technology makes things cheaper, faster, and gets out of your way. Increasingly high end smartphones don't feel like this at all.