China smartphone market suffers hard-landing, shipments decline 21% in Q1 2018 • Hacker News Board

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

#131

Post by jdietrich » Fri, May 04, 2018, 9:13 PM UTC

nostalgeek wrote: post #58

gd2 wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also apps do get updated, and when they do they sometimes grow by almost a 100 MB. Repeat that X times, and the RAM on the phone turns out to be insufficient for larger apps of the new now.

Facebook app was 600MB on my girlfriend's phone. Unbelievable. What the hell does Facebook need 600MB for? (granted it was the mostly the data but it made her phone run like crap because the data is stored in internal storage, not on SD card). I cleared the data and it was back to 150MB in less that an hour. So off course people feel like their phones run like crap with apps like that. I mean even a $50 phone today i…

>What the hell does Facebook need 600MB for?

Cache. Phones have limited storage, but they're also limited by bandwidth, latency and power. If the Facebook app did no caching it'd run slower, consume more battery and eat up the data allowance of people on limited plans.

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

#132

Post by westiseast » Fri, May 04, 2018, 9:16 PM UTC

kccqzy wrote: post #99

supertrope wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Don’t worry, the Chinese government stores all your Wechat data for you on a cloud ;)

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

#133

Post by randyrand » Fri, May 04, 2018, 9:16 PM UTC

greglindahl wrote: post #62

nadioca wrote: post #2

market saturation ?

Market saturation means that everyone who wants a smartphone already owns one.

and who can afford one.

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

#134

Post by Retric » Fri, May 04, 2018, 9:23 PM UTC

supertrope wrote: post #117

ajross wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

I wonder how much of AAPL growth is iPhone sales volume and how much is investors anticipating the next big product category. A cable TV disrupting service hasn't materialized thanks to content owners fear of repeating iTunes's dominance and effective resistance. Cars are hard to build. Medical devices are highly regulated.

Not much, Apples p/e is 17.99 that's not expecting much growth. They simply make insane and slightly growing profit year after year. Honestly they may be undervalued relative to tech stocks as even Microsoft has a p/e of 25.07.

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

#135

Post by greglindahl » Fri, May 04, 2018, 9:38 PM UTC

randyrand wrote: post #133

greglindahl wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Market saturation means that everyone who wants a smartphone already owns one.

and who can afford one.

Well, yes, but it's worth noting that smartphones are now down at the $40 and less level. And China doesn't have that many extremely poor people anymore.

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

#136

Post by sattoshi » Fri, May 04, 2018, 9:42 PM UTC

anilshanbhag wrote: post #10

It sometimes amazes me that people switch their phones so often. I tend to have a phone for 3 years. Many of my friends change every year ! One step to towards reducing global warming is reducing consumption.

All of my "techy" friends except myself are guilty. They buy a phone at most every year and often times within 6 months. What gets me is that on top of that, they exclusively get the top phones (pixel 2, Samsung s9+, and the latest iPhone were the main purchases this year).

Yet here I am, with my one plus 2 and cannot imagine changing it within the next 3 years as the improvements are negligieable for me at this point. The only thing I can consider switching to is either an iPhone or the Librem 5.

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

#137

Post by StudentStuff » Fri, May 04, 2018, 9:56 PM UTC

influx wrote: post #130

ajross wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

The Apple Watch is probably a rounding error when compared to the iPhone, however: "But the most interesting stuff came when Cook referred to the success of Apple Watch. The Watch sales are part of the wearables business which also includes headphones such as Beats and AirPods. Last May, he said that business is approaching the size of a Fortune 500 company. More recently, last month, the size had crept up so it woul…

Thing is the Apple Watch is viewed as a status symbol primarily, despite Apple's marketing and messaging stating its a health monitoring/heads up display type device. Many of the people who buy it have no idea that it'll catch some potentially imminently fatal health conditions: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-5683089/Apple-Watc...

Its impressive how many people buy the Apple Watch without understanding what it offers.

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

#138

Post by StudentStuff » Fri, May 04, 2018, 9:58 PM UTC

_0w8t wrote: post #121

bilbo0s wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's interesting because, even though I make the conscious effort to keep my iPhone 5, I thought MOST people upgraded? Reading through a lot of these comments, it seems that's not the case. That's surprising but comforting. Having teenage daughters I really started to get a kind of inferiority complex. Thinking, "Man, am I being unreasonably stubborn here?" But it always just seemed like the phone worked, so why upgr…

Friend of mine and his wife also keep their iPhone 5 from 2012. Fro my impression going to few random sites they work nicely. They changed battery only once. So I am really consider getting iPhone SE as my next phone when the current 2 years old Nexus 5 breaks or will not be supported...

The iPhone SE is a solid device, perhaps the only reason to stick with Android is if you need faster speeds or notably better coverage on T-Mobile (which requires Band 71) as Apple's LTE modems aren't great right now.

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

#139

Post by jstarfish » Fri, May 04, 2018, 10:00 PM UTC

digi_owl wrote: post #87

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.

It really makes this "old" guy miss the days when Nokia et al would bring out all kinds of wacky attempts at phones. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nokia_3650 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siemens_SX1 These days they all seems to be some variant of a glass slab. Damn it, the most used apps are "variants" of SMS and MMS in HD...

I miss my Sidekick...

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

#140

Post by StudentStuff » Fri, May 04, 2018, 10:06 PM UTC

woolvalley wrote: post #128

supertrope wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

You can't clear chats? iMessage has a similar issue and you solve it by deleting the chat and then rejoining / continuing it again.

There isn't automatic conversation trimming? This is a feature Signal added years ago, I'm surprised iMessage doesn't have it. Then again, Apple seems to have the whole iMessage platform in maintenance mode, the biggest updates are emojis, no giphy integration or new features coming out biweekly or anything like that.