Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:
The global smartphone market is shrinking for the first time as choosey buyers in emerging markets hang on to their mobiles for longer.
In Gartner's Q4 sales stats, Samsung maintained a narrow lead in global volume shipments of smartphones – but every major (top five) vendor outside of those based in China saw unit shipments slip.
Some 407.84 million handsets found a new home in the quarter, equating to a 5.6 per cent slide or 24.29 million fewer phones sold than the prior year.
Several major factors caused the market shrinkage, said Anshul Gupta, research director at Gartner. "First, upgrades from feature phones to smartphones have slowed right down due to a lack of quality 'ultra-low-cost' smartphones and users preferring to buy quality feature phones.
"Second, replacement smartphone users are choosing quality models and keeping them longer, lengthening the replacement cycle of smartphones. Moreover, while demand for high quality, 4G connectivity and better camera features remained strong, high expectations and few incremental benefits during replacement weakened smartphone sales," Gupta added.
This is a characteristic of the emerging markets, where all the action is – not mature markets like the UK or USA.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Dr Spin on Monday February 26 2018, @07:35AM (4 children)
users preferring to buy quality feature phones
There are a lot of use cases where a touch screen is a disaster, or cameras are forbidden.
There are plenty of people who actually value battery life over social media (or, indeed, ANYTHING over social media).
Warning: Opening your mouth may invalidate your brain!
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 26 2018, @07:37AM
A lot of feature phones have cameras too. I guess the kinds of places that ban cameras would also ban cell phones in general.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 26 2018, @09:24AM
You can get "dumb phone" level battery life from many smart phones if you use them like a dumb phone.
Go look at the standby times. Some are > 400 hours. The talk times can be even longer than "oldschool" dumb phones.
Compare:
https://www.gsmarena.com/xiaomi_redmi_4_(4x)-8608.php [gsmarena.com]
https://www.gsmarena.com/nokia_3310-192.php [gsmarena.com]
https://www.gsmarena.com/nokia_1600-1188.php [gsmarena.com]
https://www.gsmarena.com/nokia_1112-1523.php [gsmarena.com]
(Score: 2) by frojack on Monday February 26 2018, @06:13PM
You can hardly find even feature phone without a camera. Friends of mine work in a Navy base where cameras are not allowed. Not on base. Not on ship. Not even in your car.
I think Amazon has 3 such models. They all buy one of these just to call home.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 2) by bob_super on Monday February 26 2018, @06:43PM
> use cases where a touch screen is a disaster
If you want to teach some colorful swear words to your children, put them next to my dad when he's forced to use a touch screen.