Live data from Hacker News

Apple to beat Samsung in smartphone shipments for first time in 14 years

sherwood.news

41–50 of 104 posts

Re: Apple to beat Samsung in smartphone shipments for first time in 14 years

#41
post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Samsung has good hardware, but their software is really mediocre, at best. Many of their devices are laggy and slow down further after some updates. This is the case even on high-end devices. Our 12-month-old Galaxy Tab is slower than a 7-year-old Pixel. Hard to understand. Plus, they make really odd tweaks to the UI, such as adding a permanent button overlay that clashes with most hamburger icons in websites and app…

Samsung hardware is not what it used to be. They have been shipping the same camera block for something like three or four models. Compared to what Chinese competitors like Xiaomi or Oppo offer, it doesn't look that great anymore. The poor software is just the cherry on top.

On top of buggy software they just have user hostile design choices. Like forcing agreements to sell health data if you want a step counter, or shoving ads in your face that you can't disable without hamstringing functionality.

Makes me think about switching if alternative markets really do come to iOS and they get a real firefox

Re: Apple to beat Samsung in smartphone shipments for first time in 14 years

#42
post #21
post #5

Not because Apple made a jump in sales but mostly because Samsung has been on a decade long decline.

If it weren't for the S-Pen, I'd ditch Samsung in a heartbeat. The day iPhone has a built-in EMR/AES stylus is the day I become a customer (despite being an Android lifer). Don't think that will ever happen though, despite Apple shipping Pencil for iPads. Samsung has definitely built a (small) moat being the only vendor with that offering.

The rumors say Apple is shipping their folding phone next year, I'm crossing my fingers that one might have stylus support and then it'll meander its way back to the regular phones.

Re: Apple to beat Samsung in smartphone shipments for first time in 14 years

#43
post #29

I belong to one demography of ex Samsung customers: I've blacklisted them for hurting UX to show ads. Last device: my very high-end OLED TV has the worst menu navigation, just to take me back to the home screen where they hoped to show ads to me. Once I realized they are analysing my content, even when coming from an external device to send home for ADs, I just disconnected it from the internet. I'll not buy anything…

TBF: Apple has slowly been on the “push our services” ads thing. At least not other companies.

But they’re doing it. And it’s annoying.

Re: Apple to beat Samsung in smartphone shipments for first time in 14 years

#44

Ship more don't mean sell more. It means the factory workers screwed more together and they want to sell more. That's all. The market decides who's beating who.

This is the best supply chain in the world. They ship _because_ they're selling.

They offload unsold inventory to the big mobile network carriers. Has nothing to do with supply chain.

Re: Apple to beat Samsung in smartphone shipments for first time in 14 years

#45
post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Looks like Samsung decreased a lot because Xiaomi ate their lunch, which doesn't surprise me.

That happened due to the China-South Korea trade war following the installation of THAAD in SK in 2016 [0]. Notice how the Chinese OEM spike and Samsung's decline happen following the 2016-17 diplomatic crisis. It was also during this period that Korea Inc began shifting to Vietnam [1][2] and India as a result. Additonally, that spike for Xiaomi and other Chinese OEMs also happened right when Chinese OEMs expanded th…

>> That happened due to the China-South Korea trade war following the installation of THAAD in SK in 2016 [0]. Not really. THAAD really plays no part in Samsung's fall in China. Samsung's smartphone sales in China was already down by -70% by the time THAAD broke out in 2016 from its peak in 2013 and still went down further to less than 1%. Samsung packed up and closed the last Chinese factory in 2019 -- went to Vietnam instead.

Patrick McGee recently released Apple in China: The Capture of the World's Greatest Company: it better describes the anti-foreign political situation in China at the time and what it meant to the smartphone industry. And how Apple avoided Samsung's fate, but is now captured by it. See Chapter 26 "Despot" and on.

Re: Apple to beat Samsung in smartphone shipments for first time in 14 years

#46
I don’t know how Samsung has been getting away with it for so long. They have this stellar reputation as a premium brand when they are more akin to Roku. Their software experience is among the worst in the industry. Their hardware isn’t as good as people perceive it to be either. I bought 5 of their TV’s and there aren’t 2 that display colors the same way with the exact same settings. The quality is abysmal.

Re: Apple to beat Samsung in smartphone shipments for first time in 14 years

#47
post #6
post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Looks like Samsung decreased a lot because Xiaomi ate their lunch, which doesn't surprise me.

I'm surprised that Samsung managed to stay #1 globally for so long after forced out of China, after Xi's rise to power in 2013.

Well huawei ban bought samsung sometime, scared PRC brands from expanding into north american market. TBH Samsung was still pretty dominant until PRC brands really turned dial on hardware while Samsung stagnated until they couldn't. The latest round of hardware is pretty good, as in PRC flagship parity worthy. TBH the Koreans are very talented, they don't have the numbers to keep up with PRC speed / product cycles, but if they can iterate proper flagship every other year, they'd be in a good place. Also not putting ads on fridges.

Re: Apple to beat Samsung in smartphone shipments for first time in 14 years

#49
post #46

I don’t know how Samsung has been getting away with it for so long. They have this stellar reputation as a premium brand when they are more akin to Roku. Their software experience is among the worst in the industry. Their hardware isn’t as good as people perceive it to be either. I bought 5 of their TV’s and there aren’t 2 that display colors the same way with the exact same settings. The quality is abysmal.

I saw a set of reasonably high end 'Colour True' monitors, and they all looked markedly different until they were profiled. Did you compare to a set of other companies TVs before deciding Samsung was garbage?

Re: Apple to beat Samsung in smartphone shipments for first time in 14 years

#50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or maybe they make better phones?

I got tired of Android after 9 years of being Android only. I just wanted a phone that worked. Apple made said phone. Android feels like your younger cousin's sketchy Windows computer. I remember changing from like 2 different Android phones over a period of 4 years or so, and my amazing megapixel photos looked nowhere near as good as my cousins 5-year-old iPhone photos.

I switched to IPhone 13 pro 3.5 years ago and I have the completely opposite experience. It doesn’t “just work”.

- Swipe typing is so horrible I had to disable it.

- Notifications are extremely large and you have less control over what type of notifications you want to receive.

- You can’t transfer files by simply connecting your phone to a PC.

- Videos played in Safari don’t automatically rotate to landscape mode (nor there is a button to quickly do this) unless you disable portrait lock from control center. If you lock this again hoping it will stay in landscape it will switch back to portrait mode.

- You can’t set alarm on a certain date.

- You can only snooze the alarm for 9 minutes (I think you can configure this in iOS26, but this was unacceptable even 5 years ago)

- Apps get killed or stopped in background extremely frequently which means that if you have some long running task you need to keep the app open.

- Hotspot automatically disconnects even with a Macbook (Windows/Linux is much worse). I used to live without home internet relying on hotspot feature. IPhone hotspot proved to be extremely unreliable.

This is not even mentioning more technical things like sideloading, torrent client etc.

Post reply on HN