Samsung is no longer the world’s biggest smartphone maker, Apple is
Samsung is no longer the world’s biggest smartphone maker, Apple is
Apple shipped more smartphones than Samsung in 2023
I knew this would happen around the S21 series when they removed the last hardware item of consequence, the SD Card slot. After that, Samsung focused on being Android's iPhone, except they imitated all of Apple's shortcomings instead of playing to their core values that got them here in the first place: hardware supremacy. Now that the only discernable difference between Samsung and Apple is the OS (folding screens aside), people's choices became binary (iPhone or equally expensive iPhone clone) instead of multifaceted (headphone jacks, SD card slot, etc. vs iPhone). Actually, scratch that - Apple actually added more hardware features* (action button and USB-C) on their latest model, making Samsung look dumber for regressing.
On top of that, other OEMs, like Google, caught up with the only hardware that Samsung has been improving on - the cameras and folding screens - and soaked in customers that feel spurned by Samsung (myself included as of 2 weeks ago), for a lower price. If they don't reverse course and begin concentrating on hardware advantages, especially in an era where consumers are so starved for features that Nothing Phone made a living out of glowing back lights, this may be the beginning of the Korean giant's death knell since younger generations are choosing iPhones.
*Side note - I'm even more pissed about the removal of expandable storage on Android since Apple actually brought them back for the recent MacBooks! So people who claim it's an outdated technology can try and explain why it's making a return on $2K laptops, but not mobile devices other than for greed.
Here in the UK apple is actually cheaper. The S23 from Samsung.com is £849, while the iPhone 15 from apple.com is £799
Disagree entitely. Samsung was never #1 because of their S line at all,butt their A line, many of which still have those features. Lower end mattered much more than anything not "budget."
How do you think they got their lower budget models to be so successful? By using the R&D and marketing budget on their flagships. Do you think Samsung would still be selling as many lower end phones if they couldn't advertise and actually entice consumers? They would be competing for scraps along with Moto, Asus, and other niche brands. Hell, there might not even be an Android presence in the US if they only made $200 phones! Apple's domination would be complete.
Good analysis, thanks!
(myself included as of 2 weeks ago)
Which phone did you get, if I may ask? A Pixel?
While I agree with you in general...
So people who claim it's an outdated technology can try and explain why it's making a return on $2K laptops, but not mobile devices other than for greed.
Quality. A phone is gonna see a lot more shock than the average laptop, so a card slot has to be very robust to prevent data loss. Across two LG, three Moto and one Blu, I've dealt with SD corruption on every one of them. The worst case was one of the Motos. It would corrupt the SD at the drop of a pin. The shock of dropping the phone less than a foot onto my bed was enough. The best one was my first Android phone, the LG Stylo, which had a removable battery with the SD card under that. It only corrupted the card a few times the whole time I had it, though do keep in mind that we're talking about how often total data loss is acceptable. It took me years to realize that I was paying more in my time and lost data than the cost of just getting a phone with more storage.
That's so wild to me.
I can't imagine going iOS. I absolutely cannot. My sister recently switched to an iPhone, and everyone told her that's stupid, and she hates it, but she has to because her daughter's school has only iPads and the whole parental control doesn't work very well in that regard. I wonder whether it's largely via such avenues that Apple gets a foothold and then due to their utterly closed ecosystem design they can spread throughout families and groups of friends once in. I know they target students heavily for macbooks for example.
It's wild to me too.
The strangest thing was when I learned that teenagers bully the ones who have Android because they mess up with the iMessage chats. So weird.
What do you mean it doesn't work very well? But they're using screen time plus content and privacy restrictions, you should be able to just set a pin on the device itself. With no need to remote manage through family sharing
Meanwhile I type this on an absolutely gorgeous Motorola Edge 2023 that costs half the price of either...
The reality is that Samsung doesn't care. They make iPhones displays for them so they make money either way.
Well, Samsung Display doesn't care, but I'm sure Samsung Electronics higher ups care about their bonuses
More reasons for the US government to break them up. Their walled garden kills innovations and competition.
Can you imagine Microsoft stops selling Win11 to the OEM and is only available on their hardware? Same for the app store. Imagine having to buy your games through their store without the ability to side load software?
How come Microsoft gets shit but Apple doesn't. Fuck Apple.
It's timing the US doesn't give a shit about monopolies or whatever now. If Microsoft did what they did now no one wold care.
That's the unfortunate truth. Fortunately Microsoft ISN'T doing this. Apple and Google seems to be the ones doing most of the evil.
You know how in SciFi movies everyone has the same phone? This is why.
Huh, I always put that down to the fiction part of science fiction 😉 Can you imagine a scifi story where the lead says "oh, sorry, I can't send you this file cause you don't have a [brand device]"? 🤣
Sure, a sci-fi comedy.
At some point they have to go on a quest to dig up the coder who wrote a piece of software that stopped working but it's so old nobody knows hpw to fix it anymore, so they need to do a National Treasure type adventure to find the journals and notes of the guy who wrote ImageMagick.
I'd watch that movie about planned obsolescence and shitty tech infrastructure growing ever-more-fragile.
which is the smallest smartphone manufacturer?
(by which i mean the manufacturer of the smallest reliable smartphone.)
Idk about smallest but the Asus Zenfone line is smaller and very nice