The Friday Checkout
Get 10% off your Bellroy orders using my sponsored link:
▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬
►►► This video ◄◄◄
This week China blocked Intel’s big acquisition of Tower Semiconductor, Smartphone sales dipped to their lowest point since 2013 and LG and Samsung are making tablets weird again.
Episode 160
This video on Nebula: https://nebula.tv/videos/tfc-phone-sales-keep-crashing-down-to-2013-levels
▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬
►►► TechAltar links ◄◄◄
Social media:
https://mas.to/@techaltar
https://bsky.app/profile/techaltar.bsky.social
https://instagram.com/TechAltar
https://discord.gg/npKQebe
▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬
►►► Attributions & Time stamps◄◄◄
Writing & Research: Tristan Rayner
Music by Edemski: https://soundcloud.com/edemski
0:00 Intro
0:17 The Brief
3:34 China blocks Intel
5:00 Phone sales crashing
6:57 Tablets getting weird
Hey happy Friday! Sorry for the slightly subpar audio, I had a microphone issue I only noticed once it was too late to re-shoot. Tried to save it with AI as well as possible 🙂
Get 10% off your Bellroy orders using my sponsored link: https://bit.ly/47Ctwmj
I think the market condition you are describing is called SATURATION and happens to all products at some point.
Phones stopped improving (for the owner/user) some years ago. The general public is noticing more and more.
Wait, first WebOS tablet was the HP touchpad… which went fire sale for 99 dollar
Nooo why are phone sales falling I was hoping to get one of the latest phones secondhand now all secondhand phones are going to be more expensive!
I would love to buy a phone if they made one that fit in my hand and didn't cost over 500 dollars. But they don't. So I'm gonna stay here, keep using my Galaxy A40 from 4 years ago until it dies and then I'm going back to a dumb phone.
Raising prices without actually upgrading the phones is crazy
I own a 4 year old Xiaomi pro: camera 108 map still fantastic, battery still great, all apps running smoothly… why should I replace it?
If you already bought a phone from 2019 or 2018 onward there's pretty much no reason to buy the recent smartphone.
I bought a Samsung Galaxy A8 for £400 5 years ago and it still does everything I need it to do: browse the internet, watch YouTube videos, general phone stuff.
Why would I pay ~£1000 to replace my current phone with one that doesn't do those things much better anyway? Especially considering my current phone still has a headphone jack and sd card whilst new models don't.
The new phones are very expensive because of things like high end cameras that most people don’t need and haven’t got the money to pay for. Meanwhile for the things that people actually use their phones for, the earlier models work just fine. So of course there is just no good reason to upgrade the phone.
Look up the S-curve of new technology product acceptance & life cycle.
Oh nooo! I just installed Android 13 on my Sony Xperia XZ1! I also have a new spare battery ready. I think I will keep it at least another 5 years. Bummer…
This comment was typed using my Galaxy Note8 from 2017. It's about as perfect as a smartphone can be and has everything I need. The only issue with it is that the battery doesn't seem to work as well as it used to. I'll keep using it for as long as I can.
The new phones are no better than the old ones, in some cases even worse. How hard is it to include a headphone jack on new phones? As someone who still uses wired headphones, I see the lack of a headphone jack as an absolute loss.
Smartphones are maturing. New generations are not significantly better than previous ones. So why bother upgrading?
When you remove basic connections and functions over the course of 10 years and use the excuse, "we're innovating a better experience." your customers will leave. I bought a Nokia phone not because it had any shiny new specs but because it had basic functions; usb-c, headphone jack, micro sd card, decent camera, and android one. It was their flagship but was still affordable at just over 500. These other companies that push you to buy a phone that costs >800 to have tech that is over a decade old is just stupid.
the last phone i was excited to buy, i bought in 2014. ever since then i've been coasting. my phone is what, 5 years old tech at this point. i just don't care anymore
I kept my galaxy s8 for 5 years and only stopped using it when the battery no longer held a good charge. I constantly looked at new phones since the second year having it, and never found a new phone with the same features. SD card, headphone jack, oled, wireless charging, waterproof. Its not a long list but nobody offers that kind of phone anymore.
Phone technology has reached its peak.
I think the reason why smartphone sales have been decreasing since 2013 is because almost everyone who wants a smartphone already has one, and as the technological progress is not as fast as before, there's less motivation to buy a new device every year.
Fake 5g from the west ….